[pjnews] The MLK You Don't See On TV

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Media Beat, January 4, 1995
The Martin Luther King You Don't See on TV
By Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon

It's become a TV ritual: Every year in mid-January, around the time of
Martin Luther King's birthday, we get perfunctory network news reports
about the slain civil rights leader.

The remarkable thing about this annual review of King's life is that
several years-- his last years-- are totally missing, as if flushed down a
memory hole.

What TV viewers see is a closed loop of familiar file footage: King
battling desegregation in Birmingham (1963); reciting his dream of racial
harmony at the rally in Washington (1963); marching for voting rights in
Selma, Alabama (1965); and finally, lying dead on the motel balcony in
Memphis (1968).

An alert viewer might notice that the chronology jumps from 1965 to 1968.
Yet King didn't take a sabbatical near the end of his life. In fact, he
was speaking and organizing as diligently as ever.

Almost all of those speeches were filmed or taped. But they're not shown
today on TV.

Why?

It's because national news media have never come to terms with what Martin
Luther King Jr. stood for during his final years.

In the early 1960s, when King focused his challenge on legalized racial
discrimination in the South, most major media were his allies. Network TV
and national publications graphically showed the police dogs and bullwhips
and cattle prods used against Southern blacks who sought the right to vote
or to eat at a public lunch counter.

But after passage of civil rights acts in 1964 and 1965, King began
challenging the nation's fundamental priorities. He maintained that civil
rights laws were empty without human rights-- including economic rights.
For people too poor to eat at a restaurant or afford a decent home, King
said, anti-discrimination laws were hollow.

Noting that a majority of Americans below the poverty line were white,
King developed a class perspective. He decried the huge income gaps
between rich and poor, and called for radical changes in the structure of
our society to redistribute wealth and power.

True compassion, King declared, is more than flinging a coin to a
beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs
restructuring.

By 1967, King had also become the country's most prominent opponent of the
Vietnam War, and a staunch critic of overall U.S. foreign policy, which he
deemed militaristic. In his Beyond Vietnam speech delivered at New
York's Riverside Church on April 4, 1967-- a year to the day before he was
murdered-- King called the United States the greatest purveyor of
violence in the world today.

[pjnews] Canadian Dissent over Iraq War Plans

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MP Contacts:
Carolyn Parrish - email [EMAIL PROTECTED] / phone: (613) 995-7321
Colleen Beaumier - email [EMAIL PROTECTED] / phone: (613) 995-5381
John Godfrey - email [EMAIL PROTECTED] / phone: (613) 992-2855
Carolyn Bennett - email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] / phone (613) 995-9666



Liberal dissent brewing in Iraq crisis Mississauga MP threatens to quit

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout
/Article_Type1c=Articlecid=1035776596037call_pageid=968332188492co 
l=968793972154

Toronto Star 
January 14, 2003
TIM HARPER OTTAWA BUREAU CHIEF

OTTAWA—A Liberal MP from the GTA says she will resign from caucus if her
government joins any U.S.-led strike against Iraq that does not have United
Nations approval. 

This is crazy, Mississauga Centre MP Carolyn Parrish said yesterday. I don't
think we should be helping Americans get away with this. This is just the boys
playing with their big toys and, although we can't stop the Americans, we don't
have to legitimize this. 

Parrish has support within the Liberal caucus, many of whom appear to have been
taken aback by a perceived shift in Canada's position announced last week by
Defence Minister John McCallum. 

At best, many say they are now confused. At worst, they are predicting a new
round of caucus dissent for Prime Minister Jean Chrétien should he contribute
to U.S. President George W. Bush's Iraq mission without U.N. blessing. 

That door was opened in Washington last Thursday after McCallum met his
American counterpart, Donald Rumsfeld. 

The next day, Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham also said there could be a
set of circumstances whereby Ottawa joins a campaign without U.N. backing, as
it did in the 1999 bombing over Kosovo, a mission led by Washington and NATO. 

Yet a number of Liberal MPs said yesterday they left for their Christmas break
after being assured by Chrétien their government would take its orders from the
United Nations, not Washington. 

I can't believe McCallum is down in Washington farting around like this,
making stupid statements, Parrish said. 

This party is in a pretty shaky state right now, so I'm not looking to lead a
parade of 50 of us across the aisle and force an election. 

But I'm prepared to sit as an Independent. 

Others also predict internal trouble for Chrétien if the Canadian position is
not clarified. 

There are a lot more problems looming within caucus if they do not stick to
their multilateral approach, said Brampton West-Mississauga MP Colleen
Beaumier, who will travel to Iraq this weekend to see the situation firsthand. 

She said Chrétien has assured her the Canadian position has not changed, but
she admits to confusion. 

I would definitely be opposed to this if we went in there as any part of a
cowboy mission (without the U.N.), Beaumier said. 

John Godfrey (Don Valley West) said he could find no appetite in his riding for
Canada's involvement in a U.S.-led campaign. 

He said he could back his government's involvement without U.N. backing only in
two very extreme cases — if the U.N. deadlocked and was unable to make a
decision, or if there was indisputable proof that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein
had weapons of mass destruction and was planning to use them on a neighbour. 

Otherwise, I would be opposed to any such action, he said. 

MP Carolyn Bennett, who represents St. Paul's in Toronto, said she backs
constituents who have been flooding her Web site saying there can be no
Canadian participation in a Washington-led offensive. 

We urge you, one constituent said in a message posted on her Web site, on
our behalf, to stay the line and not join without U.N. support. We feel so
strongly about this that it would affect our vote in the next election, even
though we have been Liberal supporters for more than 30 years. 

Bennett said the apparent change has not simply caused concern within the
Liberal caucus. 

This has concerned Canadians everywhere and (MPs) would like some assurance
we're going to be consistent on waiting for U.N. authority, she said. 

Officials in Chrétien's office have been trying desperately to get their
message back on track. 

Prudence is the watchword, one spokesperson said, adding the Liberals will be
very cautious about any commitments to take part in military action against
Saddam. 

While Ottawa is keeping all options open, the government has not changed its
long-held position that any attack on Iraq should be done through a United
Nations-backed coalition, the spokesperson said. 

Parrish headed a delegation of nine MPs who visited the West Bank, Gaza Strip
and Israel last May. The trip was funded by Palestine House, a Palestinian
cultural centre based in Mississauga. 

The MPs — three Liberal backbenchers, one New Democrat, four members of the
Bloc Québécois and one independent — produced a report accusing Israel of
resorting to increasingly harsh tactics that had left Palestinians living in
sub-human conditions. 

Meanwhile, a national