The curtains have officially closed on MLK50:
Justice Through Journalism. Over the course of a year, led by Wendi Thomas
and a team of fairly-paid contributors, MLK50 acted as the journalistic voice
of the contemporary justice movement in Memphis.
There are so many takeaways from what the official MLK50 project was. In
publishing thought-provoking material about Memphis and its centers of power
and inequality, it showed the integral role of journalism in social justice. In
waging an all-out social
media war on Memphis’ major corporations, it showed what conversations
around race and inequality look like when you touch a nerve. And in paying its
contributors a living wage, it showed what an organization that prioritizes its
workers looks like.
The project was ambitious, bold, and firmly dedicated to giving a
voice to the voiceless and giving the powerful a poor taste in their mouths. It
was also accessible; completely free to read and relay, and all over social
media platforms.
MLK50: Justice Through Journalism is a perfect example of what the contemporary
movement looks like. Powerful voices putting out powerful material that
challenges our conceptions about inequality in Memphis today.
But just in case you missed out on all the incredible material MLK50
put out this year, here’s a sampler platter of Wendi Thomas and Co. at their
best:
Around the MLK50 commemoration events was a critical
question about the Memphis of 1968 and that of today: If King came to Memphis
today, what would he think?
In December, Wendi Thomas asked her social media
followers the titular question, and the responses were in the hundreds. The
list that photographer Andrea Morales constructed highlights the landscape of
black political power and community investment in Memphis.
If King came to Memphis, according to MLK50
readers, he would see the highlights of black achievement and the consequences
of his activism as well as the spaces of frustration for black Memphians. He
would see the community empowerment and education initiatives at Manna House
and Freedom Prep. But he would also see the markers of Confederate legacy that
still stand and the I-40 Bridge, where Memphians cried out against police
brutality.
Indeed, the picture King would get of Memphis would
be almost schizophrenic: achievement merely blocks away from oppression.
Guest contributor Tom Jones of Smart City
Memphis wrote this article, a historically-minded analysis of historic
continuities in the way that Memphis approaches labor rights.
The article is centered around the crushing
injustice of reserving low-wage jobs for communities of color and white-collar
jobs for whites. Much of Jones’ economic analysis, however, argues that Memphis’
economic woes are largely the consequence of this dynamic.
“Breaking the link,” he writes, “between race
and inequality is a matter of self-preservation.”
Memphis has always been an anti-union,
anti-black achievement city. But it is only in investing in black communities
and those that need it most that Memphis as a whole can thrive.
The title to Wendi Thomas’ article says it all.
The answer to poverty everywhere is straightforward. Where there is no money,
money needs to be.
She also tackles one of the central issues in
the commemoration of Martin Luther King. The memorialization of the Civil
Rights giant was largely centered around an image of King that more resembled a
passive, kumbaya leader than the
historical King, who repeatedly and directly challenged the capitalist status quo in America.
“The issue is workers, jobs, and wages,”
Thomas writes. "King came to Memphis in 1968 to support underpaid garbage workers, who did dirty, dangerous jobs for poverty wages."
The commemoration in Memphis, Thomas
argues, should be centered around the way forward. What’s next? Bringing more
money to impoverished Memphians, as opposed to ignoring the real King, the advocate for those that
had been made poor.
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