From left: Michael, Jeff, Pastor Elizabeth O'Neill, Gwendolyn, Jason, Bill, Shamako, Abel

We had the privilege to interview Robert and Genie Graetz at the church. The Graetzes were part of the original Poor People’s March in 1968. Before that they were key members of the civil rights community in Montgomery and helped organize the famous Bus Boycott of 1955. They were the only white people who had a church in the black community at that time. They lived across the street from Rosa Parks and were close friends with her and Dr. King. Miss Parks even helped them clean up the glass after their home was bombed by the Ku Klux Klan. Their house was bombed a total of three times. Them and their children survived every attempt to murder them, and the violence didn’t kill their spirits either.

Jeannie and Bob Graetz talk about their involvement in the Civil Rights Movement

“All of us knew that some of us were going to die and we just had to accept that reality and move on. Dr. King used to say in our board meetings, 'Now some of us are going to die. If you can't deal with that you shouldn't be here. It's time for you to leave the meeting and go on your way.' And nobody ever left," Bob told us.

The amazing courage and commitment of the Graetzes and others in that movement empowers us to face the tremendous challenges ahead in the movement to end poverty and build a just world. The Graetzes reaffirmed to us Dr. King’s commitment to economic justice in the last years of his life. Most of the church and civil rights groups who had supported him in the civil rights movement turned against him when he moved his focus to ending poverty and war. Every major news media outlet in the nation attacked him viciously. He continued to follow his conscience and address what he felt were the “giant triplets” causing so much suffering on the planet – racism, imperialism, and capitalism.

“Don’t be afraid to stand by yourself,” Genie Graetz offered us as advice. “A lot of people don't want to do something unless someone else is doing it.”

We also had the pleasure to interview Georgette Norman, Director of the Rosa Parks Museum at Troy University and a long time community activist and scholar. She reminded us about all the behind the scenes work that went into making the Civil Rights Movement happen. She gave us a historical context beginning in the late 19^th century of activities and organizing brewing which would eventually lead to the Civil Rights Movement.

Interviewing Georgette Norman

“In our culture we like to talk about moments, not movements. But it’s movements that create those powerful moments,” Georgette told us. “They talk about these things in a disempowering way so that no one thinks they can be a King or a Rosa Parks.”

Georgette reminded us that Parks did not just decide to sit down on a bus one day. She was a long-time organizer and was trained in nonviolent civil disobedience. She had been the director of the youth branch of the NAACP. She was part of a network of people who were attending meetings, educating themselves, and strategically planning how to take action in order to win goals that would move them forward. Her act of resistance on that bus was more than a grand moment in history, it was part of a calculated and powerful movement for social justice.

Today, most of the racial and economic inequities that existed then are still around. In some cases they are much worse. The prison population has skyrocketed, and it disproportionately affects poor people and people of color. Wealth inequality is far worse than it was then. The U.S. military, hand in hand with Wall Street thugs, is murdering civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Palestine. So where is the mass movement in opposition?

The U.S. Social Forum will be a space for all of our disconnected movements around the U.S. and the globe to unite, strategize, and plan to take concrete actions to target the systems that affect us all, and fundamentally change our society for the better. Our situation today is also very different than it was in the fifties and sixties. New communication technologies serve to distract, but also empower us in unprecedented ways. Mass media is more consolidated and controlled than ever before. All these factors magnify the need for affected communities and people of conscience to unite in order to build a movement that can truly liberate us from the power structures and heartless institutions that oppress us. We need to unite to build institutions that have compassion, cooperation, and liberation as their driving force. Housing, healthcare, and jobs are not privileges - they are human rights! The U.S. Social Forum will be a major step towards building grassroots movements of courage and conviction that are powerful enough to build the beloved community our ancestors and elders fought for.

Will you join us in Detroit? Register now at ussf2010.org!