GRP Co-Founder Mel King's Address to the 2010 GRP Convention

Congratulations on the campaigns that were waged on both local and statewide levels. Congratulations also to the organizations that received awards today and to all for believing we can get stronger. We must and we will.

When we’re asked why people would want to join with us and we with them, what is it that we offer that shows we are in touch spiritually, socially, psychologically?

The Dream Girls sing, “We should let them have our music, so they can feel as good as we.” What do we have to give, so that people want to feel as good as we do?

Historian and theologian Vincent Harding (who wrote Martin Luther King, An Inconvenient Hero) writes in There is a River that the struggle has always been for a “new and informed humanity, and not equal opportunity in a dehumanized society.“ He further reminds us that we are in a noble experiment – this thing called “democracy.” It is a work in progress.

Are we the ones we are looking for, with the ideas and willingness to dance furiously during hard times?, as Alice Walker asks. Are we remembering the willingness to go to jail of by the civil rights movement, women's movement, and labor movements, based on the belief that they had right to define the conditions for participation politically, socially, and economically?

If so, let us answer the call for new leadership that binds and heals because we listen; and listening is an affirmation of the humanity of others. We define “democracy” as valuing all people; we define “power” as supporting others to get where we are and beyond; and we define “development” in human terms.

We need a “Green Sheet” that quantifies the economic and political facts about whose interests it is the government is working. Ralph Nader was on the right path in showing how the “propertied betters,” who from the beginning set up the government in their interest, continue to direct the focus of the government. By asking “in whose interests?” with our Green Sheet, we would be able to lay out what the relationships are and how the propertied betters have benefited in the political arena as well as in the way government helps their economy.

When we change the way we see each other, in Harding’s “new and informed humanity,” we will stop using terms like “illegal immigrants,” because there are no persons on the planet who are illegal. We must understand that people, like all creatures, have always moved from scarce resources to where there are more opportunities for development.

I was impressed during the campaign with the way that our candidate for governor reframed the nature of the debate in terms of how we identify new-comers. And it's having an impact on the governor and how he would describe the same individuals.

Are we the ones we're looking for?

We, who were there to provide some energy to stop foreclosures and displacement.

We, who called for and marched to abolish poverty.

We, who push for sustainable green jobs and environmental protection.
Are we the ones promoting a program of outreach to connect with people around community gardens and local agriculture – important vehicles for the changes we know are needed?

And, yes, we need to mobilize to end the war and the wars. The president has got his wars. The fact that folks don’t know what he is fighting for is as true now as it was with the previous president. And we know that war is not the answer. We need to push to have those resources used for human development, not human destruction. Our government has been beating our plowshares into swords and not the swords into plowshares.

We need to look at a way to set up regional job- and economic-development programs, organized locally with a goal of full employment.
Yes, there is much work to do. I think we can get on the right path and share in the development of the “new and informed humanity” where all the tribes are welcome, all the gifts are shared, and all the children are our children. A humanity where we understand that the love of power is a destructive aspect of our human relations in our community because it builds walls and sees limits, whereas the power of love opens doors and is infinite.

Love is the question and the answer.

[copyright Mel King 2010]