King was not the only one to anticipate bad things ahead for the U.S. His popularity dropped rapidly both because of his opposition to the Vietnam war, but also to the widening gap between poverty and wealth in this country. What he foresaw then has become even worse with the loss here of industrial jobs to China and others who abuse their workers and so can sell here cheaper — Walmart and others that have driven out our small neighborhood stores.
In Morningside Heights (Columbia) stores are selling at outrageous rates and our lower West Harlem stores have been driven out of business.
People living in public housing are hit from all directions. In one category of public housing with the ending off of a 25 year lease arrangement, people are literally being evicted by new market rates that replaced their previously affordable rents. Slightly south of Columbia some big outfits are buying up rental housing, doing some reconstructing of apartments which allows them, too, to raise rents to market rates.
One would expect Columbia to be fighting for such people in need, but in Manhattanville it is trying to evict them with eminent domain tactics. They have allowed the low cost stores to be driven out in this process.
As a Columbia Ph.D. I am appalled by my own university.
The caring people in NYC are being drowned out by the BIG MONEY which includes our richest one, Mayor Bloomberg, who bought himself an illegal third term in office and who always supports the huge real estate interests rather than our our needy — particularly our growing numbers of homeless.
Bill Moyers and Michael Winship | Dr. King’s Economic Dream Deferred
Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, Truthout: “This is a perilous moment. The individualist, greed-driven free-market ideology that both our major parties have pursued is at odds with what most Americans really care about. Popular support for either party has struck bottom, as more and more agree that growing inequality is bad for the country, that corporations have too much power, that money in politics has corrupted our system, and that working families and poor communities need and deserve help because the free market has failed to generate shared prosperity – its famous unseen hand has become a closed fist.”
http://www.truthout.org/dr-kings-economic-dream-deferred58258
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“A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope.” (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
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Ed Kent [blind copies]
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Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackDr. or Prof. Kent,
Dr. King continues to inspire, every day and not just MLK Day.
Not politically savvy myself and easily swayed by any reasonable argument (although as a marketer I’m constantly aware of agendas behind messages), I found the video below recently which may answer in part the very moving quote from Bill Moyers and Michael Winship above as it focuses on how national politics beginning with Clinton became focus-group politics serving the desires of the swing voter with unseen consequences:
The Century Of The Self By Adam Curtis, 2002
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dA89CBBOC0
BBC four-part series (each about 60 minutes):
“This series is about how those in power have used Freud’s theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy.” — Adam Curtis
From my own reading notes of the four hours:
It outlines the tremendous influence Edward Bernays has had on the US, first beginning by promoting US entry into WWI. Bernays was Freud’s nephew and deeply influenced by the idea that people were driven by dangerous, irrational emotions and could not govern themselves …
… then his applying propaganda techniques in advertising (getting women to smoke), then changing the entire American mentality about wants vs. needs and promoting planned obsolescence as corporations worried about overproduction in the era of mass production and needs-based consuming society.
By 1927, a journalist reported Bernay’s transformation of America’s consumer landscape was complete. “The American’s importance to his country is no longer that of citizen but that of consumer.”
The rest of the film supports its case in an interesting tale of social change through the 1960s and the Human Potential Movement, and how corporations discovered this new self-actualizing individuals haven’t stopped buying. They just need a version of the stuff that speaks to them.
It ends in showing how Clinton and Blair used focus group politics to win leadership but were harried in responding to the “marketplace” of swing voters.
As a marketer, I found the public relations history and manipulation techniques fascinating.
As a self-actualizing individual who’s a minimal consumer and more concerned with fulfilling more than selfish desires, the film’s ending message, given by Robert Reich was clear: we are more than irrational bundles. But businesses have promoted and honed this because it produces ideal consumers. Politics and leadership are more: they engage the public in a rational discussion about what is best and about treating people with respect. If it’s not that, then let business do it since they’re best at detecting and fulfilling unconscious needs and desires. Business in the busines of responding to those feelings.
Rather than “someone should do something, we must do that thing.” We need to be active citizens, not passive consumers.
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