Disgusting: Anti-Immigrant Group Tries To Misuse MLK Message

In Face of Hateful Falsehoods Remember King’s Real Message of Love, Humanity and Ending Poverty

An anti-immigration group is trying to use the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to push their racially divisive message. The group, Californians for Population Stabilization, has put an advertisement on the air focused on trying to divide unemployed African Americans from the immigrant community. Their campaign plays on the high unemployment in African Americans, which has existed well beyond the surge in immigration and the economic collapse, in order to create divisions among people who should be united for a fair economy and respect for human dignity.

The advertisements oppose immigration law reform that would result in currently undocumented workers becoming legal workers. Their press release describes the advertisement:

A baritone voice asks how Dr. King “would feel about 20% of African-Americans unemployed or underemployed. About giving amnesty and jobs to 11 million illegal aliens with so many Americans jobless. About admitting 30 million more immigrant workers when 17% of Hispanic Americans are having trouble finding work. About Americans of all races not seeing a wage increase in 40 years.” The commercial concludes with the question, “Was THAT Dr. King’s dream?”

Dr. King’s approach would be quite the opposite. He preached on the basis of love and solidarity with the poor, he recognized the unfairness of the capitalist system and the wealth-divide it creates. He would have urged African Americans and Latinos to unite for fair immigration laws and living wages for all — laws that respected their human rights and dignity. King would have urged a transformation of the economy to a full employment economy that treated all with respect. In his final sermon, “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution”, given four days before his assassination. Dr. King spoke about poverty and called on all Christians join in the ongoing struggles against racism, poverty, and especially violence.

He recounted a trip to India where he saw millions of poor and impoverished. Of the experience he said: “something within me cried out, ‘Can we in America stand idly by and not be concerned?’ And an answer came: ‘Oh no!’ Because the destiny of the United States is tied up with the destiny of India and every other nation.” He went on to describe what would have been his next campaign, The Poor People’s Campaign:

In a few weeks some of us are coming to Washington to see if the will is still alive or if it is alive in this nation. We are coming to Washington in a Poor People’s Campaign. Yes, we are going to bring the tired, the poor, the huddled masses. We are going to bring those who have known long years of hurt and neglect. We are going to bring those who have come to feel that life is a long and desolate corridor with no exit signs. We are going to bring children and adults and old people, people who have never seen a doctor or a dentist in their lives.

We are not coming to engage in any histrionic gesture. We are not coming to tear up Washington. We are coming to demand that the government address itself to the problem of poverty. We read one day, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” But if a man doesn’t have a job or an income, he has neither life nor liberty nor the possibility for the pursuit of happiness. He merely exists.

We are coming to ask America to be true to the huge promissory note that it signed years ago. And we are coming to engage in dramatic nonviolent action, to call attention to the gulf between promise and fulfillment; to make the invisible visible.

Why do we do it this way? We do it this way because it is our experience that the nation doesn’t move around questions of genuine equality for the poor and for black people until it is confronted massively, dramatically in terms of direct action.

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And I submit that nothing will be done until people of goodwill put their bodies and their souls in motion. And it will be the kind of soul force brought into being as a result of this confrontation that I believe will make the difference.

Yes, it will be a Poor People’s Campaign. This is the question facing America. Ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation. America has not met its obligations and its responsibilities to the poor.

Here is a brief video from that speech:

Here is the an immigrant advertisement that seeks to mis-use Dr. King to divide people rather than unite them for justice.