Local Voices
Dr. King’s 2021 Dream: Dismantling the Confederacy’s Cotton Curtain Network
By Sean C. Bowers
Today from the top step of the Lincoln Memorial, where Dr. King first shared his dream with the nation, he sleeps fitfully; as the Capitol of America is taken multiple steps backwards towards the Confederacy. The secessionists, an armed White Trumpian mob of hate and violence, must have brought tears to Dr. King’s eyes, seeing his White brothers’ and sisters’ bold continued resistance to the rules of law, truth, decency, equality, civil rights, justice, grace – America herself.
He remembers the White American double-speak—“never saying what you mean or meaning what you say.” A tear must have rolled down his cheek as he saw the Confederate Flag taken to the very grounds where the South was never able to capture during the Civil War. Over Dr. King’s shoulder, President Abraham Lincoln sat in sadness. Mortally wounded yet again, he mournfully grieved. Both witnessed the unbelievable siege and attempted overthrow of the People’s House that Honest Abe in his time ordered completed.
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The continual Big Lie from Wall Street’s stock-owning cornering-the-market, American minority, rich, top one WHITE percent has always been: “They” (those Black and Brown folks) are coming for your good jobs.” Reality shows the truth. Their corporate profiteering boards sold out the American work force by off-shoring those jobs to people who would work for less, allowing corporations to pocket savings, in the form of stock dividends, profits, and stock-splits.
By pitting poor White middle-class-wanna-be’s against their (just as poor) Black and Brown neighbors (who were also struggling to feed their families), the corporate board rooms back-seated their American employee workforce. Prioritization is simple. Americans won’t work that cheaply. They will want benefits, health care, pensions, unions, and rights.
All of those are dangerous uncontrollable expenses from the companies’ corporate bottom line perspective. Fixed, reliable, issue-free labor costs are the boardroom’s and stock shareholders’ wet dream fantasies.
Paralleling the old Southern Confederate model, substituting the American workforce for slaves, (with no rights) allows profitability to go through the roof.
Dr. King saw, in his time, that poverty in White and Black America were intrinsically linked to the lower class workforce job market opportunities. By offering fewer jobs than were needed, there would always be a way to play the races against each other. Resentment and fighting each other for the leftovers and scraps, was the result.
Former Chairmen of the Federal Reserve, Allan Greenspan, once proclaimed that the biggest threat to the American stock market’s continued prosperity was having too many well paying jobs being readily available. That only drove up the average cost of labor to the majority ownership hiring infrastructure. This means that all those people upset about their town’s plant closures (see: Whirlpool, G.E., steel mill, factory, car plant manufacturing jobs…) your anger was always misplaced.
White corporate board-room America sold you out, sold out your companies, your interests, jobs, families—all for bigger all-mighty bucks in their pockets.
Instead of an American workforce with local problems, they can operate off-shore in a restriction-free, regulation-free, rights-free environment far from our prying eyes and oversight’s accountability. They even can avoid taxes by claiming off-shore headquartered losses-see General Electric making billions in profits for shareholder returns, while claiming and paying zero in corporate taxes to America. This is the “Trump Model” of the founders on steroids- plagiarized Confederate hand-me-downs, repurposed and repackaged.
Corporations’ creed: 1. Hire others to do the work you don’t want to do, can’t do, or won’t do. 2. Pay them as little as possible. 3. Get as many U.S. government subsidies as possible. 4. Never use their money to eliminate their financial risks and exposure. That way when things fail, it is never, their fault, their responsibility, their loss. It’s not their money, investments, jobs, life-savings, and families hurt.
They pass down through all those hidden “got-ya’s” to the ever-being-pared-down local work force fewer jobs and increased work for those who do make it through the repetitive downsizing.
Dr. King spoke of the “tide of opportunity lifting all boats.” He recognized the need for equal jobs, equal pay for all.
Confederate Cotton Curtain continues to limit the job market in systemic racism’s established network.
It is time for to America to take the first true post-Confederate actions in our nation’s 245-year history to ensure that ALL may experience real tangible employment, freedoms, equality and justice. There can be no appeasement with racists and White supremacists. That is exactly what got us here now, today. IT IS TIME TO STEP UP AMERICA!
