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What Would Dr. King Do?

A great piece by Dushaw Hockett of the Center for Community Change was published in the Black Star News last week.

It looks at the current immigration debates from the perspective of Dr. King's teachings and writings, and sheds some important light on a couple of key elements of that. The whole piece is worth reading, but here's an excerpt of the case Dushaw lays out:

On Violence -- King had an expansive definition of violence. It wasn’t just fist striking face. Knife cutting flesh. Bullet penetrating skull. No, King viewed poverty, racism and war as "triple evils" that, together, formed a vicious cycle of violence. Using King’s definition, undocumented workers working long hours in harsh conditions for little to no wages would be violence. Denying health coverage to children because of their immigration status would be violence.

Unjust laws -- King believed in the law. But he also believed in the right to break unjust laws. Segregation was an unjust law. Withholding the right to vote was an unjust law. If he were with us today, the King I know would view 10 year visa backlogs that keep families separated an unjust practice of law. He would view welcoming those fleeing political persecution but rejecting those persecuted — and tortured-by abject poverty an unjust law. As a result, he would stand up for the 12 million undocumented men, women and children living in the U.S. who "broke" the law.

Work and Poverty -- Before his death, King was preparing to move to scale on a major campaign against poverty. If he were with us today, he would identify the workplace as a major point of tension in the immigration debate, but also an issue around which alliances could form. I could hear King now responding to the question "Are immigrants taking jobs from native born persons?"

He’d ask, "Isn’t there a labor hierarchy in this country? Doesn’t this hierarchy take the form of a ladder, with good jobs at the top and bad jobs at the bottom? Isn’t the wanton pursuit of profits at the root of this hierarchy? Isn’t it true that Black and Brown people are overwhelmingly stuck at the bottom of the ladder, and can’t climb to the top because the ladder is broken? Isn’t the ladder broken for a host of reasons that include racial bias, lack of skills and education and language barriers? If yes, then why not bring Black, Brown and other concerned persons into relationship with one another in order to repair the ladder."

Even decades after his death, we still have much to learn from Dr. King. One of his more famous quotes talks about how all of us are connected, "in a single garment of destiny." To me that is one of the most instructive clues to how King would respond to today's immigration debate. If we are all connected in that way, how can some of us be treated so much differently under the law because of an artificial geographic border?

How can a person ever be illegal?

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