Freedom Now Vision Unfinished
Book Review of LeBlanc and Yates's "A Freedom Budget for All Americans"
Miah, Malik
http://www.solidarity-us.org/site/node/4066
Date Written: 2014-01-01
Publisher: Against the Current
Year Published: 2014
Resource Type: Article
Cx Number: CX20348
Miah critiques LeBlanc and Yates' analysis of the Civil Rights Revolution, in light of the fact that the Freedom Budget issued during this time remains unfulfilled.
Abstract:
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Excerpt:
LeBlanc and Yates, longtime activists and socialists discuss the content and origins of the Freedom Budget, the political thinking of civil rights leaders and the role of socialists. They also critique the labor officialdom that did not endorse the 1963 march.
"The Freedom Budget arose organically out of the activist wing of the civil rights movement: activists associated with Black trade union leader A. Philip Randolph and those involved in the Southern Leadership Conference (SCLC), Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
"Often glossed over, however," the authors add, "is that these men and women were influenced by conscious and organized forces that favored a socially owned and democratically controlled economy, one in which production would be for the benefit of all -- in a word, socialism."
The Freedom Movement had a simple objective: full citizenship rights for African Americans. It was understood by all in the struggle that equal rights included economic justice as well as legal freedom. There were two central demands at the 1963 March on Washington, "Jobs and Freedom." This was not an accident, since King and the other leaders said political freedom without economic equality is hollow.
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