Another bit of Good News is filed under the heading "Celebrating Resistance." A new coalition calling itself "The Majority" is emerging with the intent of building a, quoting its statement,"multi-racial, cross-movement fight for justice, freedom and the right to live fully, with dignity and respect."The movement takes its inspiration from Martin Luther King's famous speech of 50 years ago - April 4, 1967 - when he explicitly broke with the Lyndon Johnson administration on the Vietnam War and directly linked the war to what he called "the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism," declaring that the suffering and poverty of the people of Indochina are linked to the suffering and poverty of the poor and minorities in the US.
Put more simply, we're all in this together.
The Majority includes more than 50 organizations focusing on racial and economic justice, including Black Lives Matter Global Network, Mijente, Fight for $15, Indigenous Environmental Network, and many more, and is planning for a series of local forums and actions leading up to a strike on May Day, May 1.
I hate to keep harking back to the dreaded '60s, but one of the things that gave the time its dynamism and the social movement its power was the recognition that all of our various struggles - over the war, over racism and sexism, over poverty, over the environment, over still more - were connected, were parts of a greater overall struggle for justice. It's something the Occupy Movement, with it's idea of the 1%, also grasped, at least to some extent, but something that frankly I think progressives have mostly lost sight of over the past several decades and so it's exciting and encouraging - and Good News - to see it re-emerge.
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