Daniel TilsonHere in August 2014, 50 years after the historic “Mississippi Summer of 1964” helped propel America forward in search of Civil Rights progress, I’m literally brought to tears by what has happened in Ferguson, Mo.
They’re tears of both grief and rage, just like they were 50 years ago.
My first cousin Karen (now a retired New York judge) was a young Civil Rights activist taking part in “Freedom Summer.” Thousands of college students were trained in civil disobedience before heading south by the busload to join sit-ins, peaceful demonstrations and rallies.
I was only 7 years old, but with a single mom who had worked for years at a New York City labor union fighting for the rights of mostly black workers, my awareness and empathy for the Civil Rights movement was acute.
When news came that one of Karen’s friends who’d joined other “Freedom Riders” on the buses to Mississippi had disappeared, we all held our breath back in New York. When news came that the young man, Andrew Goodman, had been murdered along with James Chaney and Michael Schwerner in what came to be known as the infamous “Mississippi Burning” case … we were all crushed.
At 7, I couldn’t wrap my head around it. But it broke a piece of my heart.
At 57, watching the Ferguson story unfold, my heart still breaks. But now my mind not only wraps, it races around this latest battleground story in the ongoing American struggle for racial equality and socioeconomic justice.
But unlike the pure, rabid racism of 50 years ago, the murder of Michael Brown in Missouri seems equally, deeply rooted in economic discrimination.
Some, including me, consider decades of precipitous economic decline in Ferguson and countless other small cities nationwide nothing less than intentional, prolonged economic or class warfare, waged by some of the most rotten, socially irresponsible rich folks in modern American history.
And yes, the Koch Brothers are the current-day embodiment of that awful ethos, using their fortune to buy government influence and shape public and economic policy to their liking. Their father, Fred Koch, was a founder of the infamously racist John Birch Society, back in the day. The organization was also virulently anti-Semitic, anti-union, etc.
But these days, if you’re a power-hungry, racist right-wing tycoon, you hide yourself under cover of legislatively condoned economic discrimination. You concentrate less on overt racial bigotry, and more on making and keeping people poor with regressive taxation and other anti-poor and anti-middle-class policies. If you engineer a system where African Americans remain disproportionately stuck in poverty-stricken areas … no complaints.
And, if you can work with Republicans to pass laws like “Stand Your Ground,” and to promote police militarization… that could help with social “control.”
Ferguson symbolizes the black population shift from inner cities to suburbs, and the explosion of suburban poverty over the same time frame.
Interesting how one follows the other.
The problem isn’t restricted to suburban areas. In South Florida we have poverty-plagued suburbs like Lauderhill in Broward County. And up in otherwise affluent Palm Beach County, the agricultural city of Belle Glade is in even worse shape, left to rot in utter exclusion from supposed “economic recovery.”
Yet last week, Saint Petersblog reported news from Florida TaxWatch that 2014 state revenue “could exceed the pre-recession high of 2005-06.” TaxWatch CEO Dominic Calabro said, “Florida is experiencing steady recovery and growth.”
With racism, economic discrimination and the murder of innocents still plaguing us 50 years after Freedom Summer, that kind of disingenuous disconnection from contextual reality is a crying shame. But this time instead of tears it’s anger that wells up, anger and frustration at just how far we’ve come in the wrong direction.
Daniel Tilson has a Boca Raton-based communications firm called Full Cup Media, specializing in online video and written content for non-profits, political candidates and organizations, and small businesses. Column courtesy of Context Florida.
