| What the March on Washington Was Really About - TJamelle Bouie - he New York Times

Opinion | What the March on Washington Was Really About - The New York Times

By Jamelle Bouie

As remembered and commemorated by most Americans, the 1963 March on Washington — its 60th anniversary fell on Monday — represents the essence of the civil rights movement, defined in our national mythology as a colorblind demand for neutrality and fairness in the face of discrimination, embodied in the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream that his “four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

Less well remembered, in our collective memory at least, is the fact that both the march and King’s speech were organized around much more than opposition to anti-Black discrimination. It was officially known as the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, with a far more expansive vision for society than formal equality under the law. The march wasn’t a demand for a more inclusive arrangement under the umbrella of postwar American liberalism, as it might seem today. It was a demand for something more — for a social democracy of equals, grounded in the long Black American struggle to realize the promises of the Declaration of Independence and the potential of Reconstruction.

Consider the 10-point list of demands issued by the organizers of the march. They wanted “Comprehensive and effective civil rights legislation” to guarantee all Americans “access to all public accommodations, decent housing, adequate and integrated education” and “the right to vote.” They wanted “a massive federal program to train and place all unemployed workers — Negro and white — on meaningful and dignified jobs at decent wages.” They wanted “a national minimum wage act that will give all Americans a decent standard of living.” They wanted federal legislation to protect workers from exploitation and a federal government that brought its full power to bear on discrimination and disenfranchisement.

Or, better yet, consider the labor leader A. Philip Randolph’s opening speech to the assembled marchers. “We want a free, democratic society dedicated to the political, economic and social advancement of man along moral lines,” said Randolph, for whom the 1963 March on Washington was the fulfillment of a call made more than two decades earlier, in the midst of World War II, to “Let the Negro masses speak with ten thousand Negroes strong, marching down Pennsylvania Avenue in the capital of the nation.”

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Journalism fails miserably at explaining what is really happening to America //Will Bunch - Philadelphia Inquirer

The January 6 mob marching to the Capitol

The police-escort motorcade bringing Trump

to Newark International airportfor his flight to an arraignment in Atlanta

Journalism fails miserably at explaining what is really happening to America  The Inquirer - Philadelphia

by Will Bunch | Columnist
Published Aug 27, 2023

They stood on an arena stage in Milwaukee under a massive sign that read “Democracy” — the metaphorical 800-pound gorilla that loomed over this strange political event but was never really discussed. When the dust finally settled after two hours of the first televised debate of the 2024 GOP primaries, nothing — from the rude kids-table outbursts from the impertinent Vivek Ramaswamy to the doomed efforts by Nikki Haley or Mike Pence to be the grown-ups in the room — actually mattered inside the airy Fiserv Forum except for one thing.

All those not-so-wonderful people out there in the dark. A mob that raged, and ultimately ruled.

This audience seemed to only care about The Man Who Wasn’t There — Donald Trump, who was too busy refueling his private jet for his next arrest to bother attending. The restive crowd reached its peak when its bête noire, the anti-Trump turncoat Chris Christie, dared try to challenge Ramaswamy’s outburst that POTUS 45 “was the best president of the 21st century.” It filled the basketball arena with boos.

The pro-Trump ruckus was such that Fox News coanchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum dramatically turned around to face the audience. “So listen,” Baier said, “the more time we spend doing this, the less time they can talk about issues you want to talk about.”

LOL. As the night dragged on, the only “issues” the crowd seemed jazzed about were brash challenges to scientific truths that it considers elite liberal pieties — like Ramaswamy’s false claim that climate change solutions have killed more people than climate change — or authoritarian vows of violence, like Ron DeSantis’ promise to render any drug dealers at the border “stone cold dead.” None of the eight people on that stage “won” — only Trump, his angry mob, and a 21st-century brand of American fascism that is the enemy of democracy, the writing on the wall.

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