Martin Luther King, Jr.
"I've Been to the Mountaintop"
3 April 1968
Church of God in Christ, Memphis, Tennessee
In listening again, all these years later, I'm struck by Dr. King's insistence on "economic withdrawal" as a tool the poor must employ for collective action and their own liberation. "That's power right there..." he says. And then he names the companies: Sealtest milk, Wonder Bread, Hart's bread. This weekend, of all weekends, let's not miss the edge here, in King's work, right to the end. In Memphis, the night before he died. He was there to organize. He was there to insist on "economic withdrawal." He was there because the people were marching for something real, and doing something real.
We must not give this power over to huge and unaccountable corporations. We must collaborate and coordinate and organize to "withdraw" support from corporations who create mayhem and enforce occupation and build walls imagined or otherwise.
I support our boycott of HP for just this reason. Our friends in Palestine--oppressed, yet not defeated; poor, yet not powerless--have demanded it. It is theirs to demand. Solidarity joins us to their struggle. At least, this is my commitment.
See more about the HP-Free Church Movement here!
From King's speech:
"Now the other thing we'll have to do is this:
Always anchor our external direct action with the power of economic withdrawal.
Now, we are poor people. Individually, we are poor when you compare us with
white society in America. We are poor. Never stop and forget that collectively
-- that means all of us together -- collectively we are richer than all the
nations in the world, with the exception of nine. Did you ever think about that?
After you leave the United States, Soviet Russia, Great Britain, West Germany,
France, and I could name the others, the American Negro collectively is richer
than most nations of the world. We have an annual income of more than thirty
billion dollars a year, which is more than all of the exports of the United
States, and more than the national budget of Canada. Did you know that? That's
power right there, if we know how to pool it.
"We don't have to argue with anybody. We don't
have to curse and go around acting bad with our words. We don't need any bricks
and bottles. We don't need any Molotov cocktails. We just need to go around to
these stores, and to these massive industries in our country, and say,
'God sent us by here, to say to you that you're not treating his children right. And we've come by here to ask you to make the first item on your agenda fair treatment, where God's children are concerned. Now, if you are not prepared to do that, we do have an agenda that we must follow. And our agenda calls for withdrawing economic support from you.'
"And so, as a result of this, we are asking you
tonight, to go out and tell your neighbors not to buy Coca-Cola in Memphis. Go
by and tell them not to buy Sealtest milk. Tell them not to buy -- what is the
other bread? -- Wonder Bread. And what is the other bread company, Jesse? Tell
them not to buy Hart's bread. As Jesse Jackson has said, up to now, only the
garbage men have been feeling pain; now we must kind of redistribute the pain.
We are choosing these companies because they haven't been fair in their hiring
policies; and we are choosing them because they can begin the process of saying
they are going to support the needs and the rights of these men who are on
strike. And then they can move on town -- downtown and tell Mayor Loeb to do
what is right..."
