You Got The Power, Inc.
Program Outline
1 Sept 2010
Topic of discussion: Co-opting “Dr. King's Dream”
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Writer Kathy Kattenburg reflects on Glen Beck and followers at the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday:
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A few months ago, promotion the “other” rally Beck said:
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“This is a moment … that I think we reclaim the civil rights movement. It has been so distorted and so turned upside down. . . . We are on the right side of history. We are on the side of individual freedoms and liberties and damn it, we will reclaim the civil rights moment. We will take that movement, because we were the people that did it in the first place!”
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Glenn Beck claims that the civil rights movement “has been co-opted by progressives”
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Beck routinely uses both the civil rights movement and its rhetoric for his own political agenda, such as his claim that his August 28 rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial will “reclaim the civil rights movement”
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Beck compared health care reform protesters to civil rights marchers
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Beck claimed his followers "are the inheritors and protectors of the civil rights movement"
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On his November 25, 2009 radio show Beck compared himself to Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Beck tell is listeners:
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"We will preserve the republic”
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“We are going to be peaceful, but we are not getting up from the counter”
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“We are not going to sit in the back of the bus”
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“We are gonna link arms and we are gonna stand together for the truth"
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Leonard Pitts asks, “Who is the “we” Glen Beck is talking about?”
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Is the “we” Glen Beck is talking about is people who look like himself?
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Glen Beck’s contention that his “we” were the architects of the civil rights movement is worse than nonsensical
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Beck's statement is an attempt to steal a legacy. It is robbery of martyr’s graves
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We’re in an odd moment
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Having opposed the freedom movement of the 20th century, some social conservatives seek, now that that movement stands vindicated and venerated, to arrogate unto themselves its language and heroes, to remake it in their image
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Here’s who “we” is.
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“We” is Emmett Till, tied to a cotton gin fan in the murky waters of the Tallahatchie River
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“We” is Rosa Parks telling the bus driver no
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“We” is Diane Nash on a sleepless night waiting for missing Freedom Riders to check in
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"We" is Dr. Bernard LaFayette Jr., a life long freedom fighter
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“We” is celebrities like Harry Belafonte, Marlon Brando and Pernell Roberts of Bonanza, lending their names, their wealth and their labor to the cause of freedom
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“We” is Medgar Evers, Michael Schwerner, Jimmie Lee Jackson, James Reeb, Viola Liuzzo, Cynthia Wesley, Andrew Goodman, Denise McNair, James Chaney, Addie Mae Collins and Carole Robertson, shot, beaten and blown to death for that cause
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The we to which Glenn Beck belongs is the we that said no, the we that cried “socialism!” “communism!” “tyranny!” whenever black people and their allies cried freedom
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Bob Herbert calls Beck “an ignorant, divisive, pathetic figure … [standing] in the shadows of giants”
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Beck is a provocateur who likes to play with matches in the tinderbox of racial and ethnic confrontation
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He famously described President Obama as a man “who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture
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He is an integral part of the vicious effort by the Tea Party and other elements of the right wing to portray Mr. Obama as somehow alien, a strange figure who is separate and apart from — outside of — ordinary American life
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Sarah Palin said she “felt the ’spirit’ ” of Dr. King and went on about how “proud” she hoped he would be of the rally
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Then in her next breath, Palin warning, “We must not fundamentally transform America as some would want. … We must restore America and restore her honor.”
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To what prior conditions does Palin think America should be restored?
