Turn of the Century Reflections on "The Movement"
May 1998
Grace Lee Boggs
To create a new movement we must first understand what happened
to the old.
As Jimmy Boggs explained in his l969 Manifesto for a Black Revolutionary
Party, the civil rights movement effectively came to an end as a movement
with the black rebellions, which brought onto the historical stage the
black street force. The clearest sign of the emergence of these new
historical actors was the spectacular growth of the Black Panther Party.
The Black Panthers were an organized force for only a few years.
Forced into a virtual civil war with the police both by provocateurs
sent into the organization to destroy it and the impatience of its own
members, the party began to fall apart. But while it lasted, it left
no doubt that black street youth were at war with the American way of
life, although they were unclear on what to put in its place.
Before his assassination Martin Luther King Jr. was also challenged by
the Vietnam war and the rebellions to go beyond the civil rights movement.
In his last speeches and writings he was exploring a new kind of
revolution that would combine a radical revolution of values with
a radical transformation of structures and thus overturn what he called
the "giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism." He recognized
that it was no longer possible to separate out the struggle against racism
from the struggle against materialism and militarism. "Material growth has
been made an end in itself." "Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual
power." Technology, he said, has been so exalted that we overlook the way
it denies people the opportunity to participate and the alienation its
produces, especially among the young. "We have guided missiles and misguided
men." King was trying to conceptualize a new social system that would go
beyond Capitalism which he said was too "I-centered, too individualistic"
and Communism which he saw as "too collective, too statist." He knew that
it was impossible to radicalize American society without a struggle against
careerism. "It was precisely when young Negroes threw off their middle class
values and put careers and wealth in a secondary role that they made a historic
social contribution," and he called for new ways to involve young people in
direct "self-transforming and structure-transforming" actions "in our dying cities."
But few black leaders heeded King's words. Some were too busy taking advantage
of the opportunities, created by the threat of more rebellions, to pursue careers
in the system. Others became so caught up in the struggle for rights that they
forgot that what had made the Civil Rights Movement so powerful was not so much
the struggle for equality ("who wants to be integrated into a burning house?")
but the struggle to stretch the humanity of all Americans. As a result, black
organizations have increasingly become self-interest groups in competition with
other self-interest groups, black struggles no longer play their historic role
of advancing everyone's humanity, and we are now engaged in a life and death
struggle for the bodies and souls of our sons and daughters trying to find their
way in an increasingly violent and materialistic society.
We will never know what King might have done had he not been killed. What we do
know is that in the last thirty years the "giant triplets" have become even more
dehumanizing, our communities and cities have been turned into wastelands by
multinational corporations and high tech, and the underclass has become increasingly
desperate. That is why inner city youth and a growing numbers of other Americans need
a vision powerful enough to redirect our anger and frustration into positive
"self-transforming and structure-transforming" struggles. Until and unless this
need is met, our country will continue to deteriorate socially and morally, no
matter how much it expands economically and technologically.
This new vision is already being created by the struggles to reclaim our communities
and rebuild our cities now going on all across the country.
As we move towards the twenty-first century, it is becoming increasingly obvious that
the main challenge facing people of color and all Americans is to create new, sustainable,
healthy and environmentally just cities where local residents are responsible for the
decisions that affect our daily lives, especially what to produce and what technologies
to use, based on what will best promote more harmonious relationships among ourselves
and with Nature.
To transform these struggles into a self-developing movement we need to involve
school children and young people with the same confidence with which the civil
rights movement engaged them in the struggle against segregation. This is the
best way to demonstrate that the city is their land to have and to hold and at
the same time to reverse the deterioration of our communities and cities. It is
also the best way to get their cognitive juices flowing. Now that high tech and
runaway corporations have made the labor of millions increasingly expendable,
all Americans, and especially young Americans, need a better reason to study
and work than just to get a job. We must reject an educational system organized
to promote individual upward mobility and the middle class values that King
deplored. In order to internalize the relationship between actions and consequences
and between cause and effect, in order to develop a profound sense of our
interdependence with one another, with the Earth and with people the world over,
our children need to be involved from early on in community-building and productive
activities. That is how human beings have developed our humanness down through the ages.
This struggle, this challenge, to rebuild, redefine and respirit our cities from the
ground up is nothing less than the fundamental "recivilizing" of our cities.
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