MMP's MLK Day Screening

We had our first official screening, with the United Way of Southeastern Pennsylvania featuring media by four amazing organizations working in Philly. We thought this was the best way to highlight the lesser known mission of Dr. King - his passion for economic justice. To set the tone, we watched some footage from Citizen King, a documentary of the final years of his life. The movie is available from the Free Library (there are 33 copies in libraries all over the city) and its amazing so check it out!

Khalif Dobson of Philadelphia Student Union (!!) kicked it off with a powerful speech. We saw a montage of the media produced by MMP and others we're connected to, and then the panel screened 3 pieces and talked about their mission and messaging. Hopefully others will post their statements because there were some wise words by many, and photos too! Here's my intro to the montage...

The mass media played many roles in the life and legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. His messages and strategy were judged, and interpretations presented to the wider public on TV, radio and in newspapers. This became the lens through which King' message was known even during his lifetime.

At times, the media lauded him for his moral leadership. This was not always the case even at the height of his prominence on the national scene. But it is significant that in 1963, his famous I Have a Dreamspeech was one of the first events to be broadcast live on television. A black preacher from the south issued a call to the nation to pay up on the promissory note written by the founding fathers: that all men have the right to the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness.

The media' admiration of King deteriorated in the years after that most famous speech, as we saw in the clip. By speaking out against the war, he lost his audience with the President. He was also rebuffed by the mass media. Some felt he should stick to moralissues, not political ones. Criticizing your government in a time of war is not looked upon favorably. But there was a war to be fought at home. King' opposition was not just out of pacifism, he saw that the war in Vietnam diverted much needed funds from the war against poverty.

He was moving into even less favorable territory when he said early in 1968, …it didn’t cost the nation one penny to integrate the lunch counters. It didn’t cost the nation one penny to guarantee the right to vote. But now we are dealing with issues that cannot be solved without the nation spending billions of dollars and undergoing a radical redistribution of economic power.”

Many of us, even those of us who celebrate this day, know a very specific picture of Martin Luther King' message. The country on holiday today mostly knows that he had a dream, and believes that the dream had something to do with racial harmony. That image of MLK is crafted by the mainstream media, and it reflects a preference for a younger Martin.

I want to read for you the poem mentioned at the end of the movie we just watched.

Now that he is safely dead
Let us praise him
build monuments to his glory
sing hosannas to his name.
Dead men make
such convenient heroes: They cannot rise
to challenge the images
we would fashion from their lives.
And besides,
it is easier to build monuments
than to make a better world.

Martin Luther King' last march was alongside the sanitation workers of Local 1199 in Memphis. He did not survive to see the initial mobilization of the Poor People' campaign, a campaign whose aim was to establish a national poor people' bill of rights. The mule train arrived in Washington D.C. in August 1968. People who lived in poverty all over the country formed a tent city in the capital. While that generation of the Poor People' campaign was short lived, today in the birthplace of our nation, there are many groups that work to realize the kind of justice that MLK envisioned in his last years.

Philadelphia is a city where we are told that 1 in 4 of our residents live in poverty. We believe this is a gross misrepresentation because the definition of poverty is very misleading. For a family of four to be considered poor, their annual income has to be below $21,200 for 2008. Can you support four people on that little money?

So, we believe that half of Philadelphia lives in poverty. Half of our neighbors struggle to put food on the table and still pay their housing costs, their bills, and maintain their health. We think this is injustice. We know that many of you have come from volunteering today to help your neighbors. We know that many of you do that everyday, even as many of you also struggle to make ends meet. We want to thank you.

And we want to thank the United Way for providing the kind of support to community organizations across this city that attempt in their day to day operations to offer some semblance of security and dignity to the hundreds of thousands of low-income families across the region.

Media Mobilizing Project is honored to work with many groups that work for justice. We assist organizations in building the capacity to make their own media, so that their messages can be broadcast without interpretation. I want to acknowledge that there are times when the mainstream press has helped to get word out about what's really going on and MMP is committed to helping groups we work with get that media coverage. But we also know that these groups need their own community media infrastructure, and we're above all committed to building that infrastructure.

As we learn to make media together, to tell the untold stories of Philadelphians together, we forge bonds between the people in our city who see the possibilities for a better start for young people, better schools, and better deals for the workers and immigrants who make our city function everyday. What we have found is that building a strong network creates beautiful connections between powerful leaders.

The montage you are about to watch shows some of the highlights of our collective work in 2008. If you haven’t heard of these groups, we hope you will find out more, get involved in some way, even if it is simply to make a much needed donation. The montage features many more groups than could be with us today but we are pleased to share with you messages direct from the Philadelphia Student Union, Unified Taxi Workers Alliance, Juntos, Labor Justice Radio and Pennsylvania Head Start Association. You will hear more when the panel presents its screenings, so let me just ask you to allow this piece to act as a small introduction to their energy, their passion and their commitment.

We are especially pleased that we are able to share that vision with you, not as a monument, but as a living movement dedicated to making Philadelphians’ vision for their city visible, audible, and in the very near future, a concrete reality.

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