George Elliott Clarke

Martin Luther King, 50 years after his assassination: George Elliott Clarke on how to carry on the movement

ullahnor — Wed, 04 Apr 2018 17:45:13 +0000

Martin Luther King, 50 years after his assassination: George Elliott Clarke on how to carry on the movement

ullahnor Wed, 04/04/2018 - 13:45

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American civil rights leader Martin Luther King addresses crowds in 1963 during the March On Washington at the Lincoln Memorial, where he gave his "I have a dream" speech (photo by Central Press/Getty Images)

Noreen Ahmed-Ullah

Topic

Global Lens

Donald Trump

George Elliott Clarke

Global

Race

U.S.

Fifty years after the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., George Elliott Clarke, a professor in the �ؿ�ζSM's department of English and Canada's former parliamentary poet laureate, reflects on the civil rights leader's legacy.

He says that even as Americans and Canadians today consider King's “I have a dream speech,” we need to embrace the message behind the words and launch another mass movement for change.

“You need to have a grassroots movement of the type that King inspired, a mass movement that would bring together Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, folks opposed to wanton gun violence,” said Clarke (pictured right).

“That would be the real legacy of Dr. King – to have that kind of mass movement sparked and active right now.”

What is Rev. Martin Luther King's legacy? Where are we today with race relations?

As we look at 50 years, half a century since the assassination of Dr. King, I think that just as we often celebrate the “I Have a Dream speech,” it’s really important to focus on his entire legacy.

It was a legacy rooted in the struggle for liberation and also involving concepts that he borrowed from Mahatma Gandhi, in terms of Mr. Gandhi’s successful drive to achieve independence for India and simultaneously Pakistan when those two nations were born out of the beginning-of-the-end of British imperialism.

It is very significant that Dr. King adopted the strategy of non-violent mass resistance and civil disobedience from Mahatma Gandhi in order to encourage millions of African-Americans, especially those in the south of the United States, to struggle for their basic human rights and their civil liberties. Because of that, he was able to lead a successful revolution. He was able to move masses of African-Americans from a state of near peonage, from a state of being violently oppressed via police and other instruments of state power into positions of equality, greater power, dignity and decency.

King’s movement also succeeded in getting the Voting Rights Act passed in 1965. He made it possible for more African-Americans to aspire to equality for opportunity, to be able to apply for jobs in whatever field they thought they were qualified, and progress, ascend, move into management, become professionals and become owners of various enterprises. I don’t think it’s possible to understate the magnificence of that achievement. He made it possible for African-Americans to elect governors and senators, and representatives in Congress who reflected their heritage, race, or were respectful of their needs and desires as voters, and in that way made it possible for African-Americans to feel truly a part of the American republic.

His movement was revolutionary, and he did liberate millions of people from peonage, slavery-like conditions, from experiences of inhumane treatment, attacks on their dignity making it possible for them to dream of rising as high as their talent would allow them to, including becoming eventually president of the United States. In all of history, not many people get the right to call themselves liberators.

Like Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King is one of the very few who can talk about liberating people. It is one thing to become the leader of the country, to be a prime minister, president or king or dictator for that matter. It is another thing to move millions of people from conditions of pseudo-enslavement to the possibility of living decent lives with the opportunity of economic advancement and even attaining social prestige. King achieved all that. It cannot be understated. He is a true hero for anyone interested in liberating people from conditions of poverty, illiteracy and oppression.

At the same time, at the point of his death he was organizing what became known as “Resurrection City.” The radical idea was that poor people, black, brown, white, yellow from across the U.S. would descend upon Congress and physically occupy the monuments, the buildings in order to impress upon legislators that they needed to have resources redirected from the Vietnam War to uplift millions of Americans from positions of poverty to middle class status. Some scholars believe that it was because of King’s radical agenda in the spring of 1968 that he was eventually assassinated. There are still questions about how James Earl Ray received the money and weapons to carry out the assassination and the connivance perhaps of various branches or a branch of the U.S. government that permitted or encouraged the assassination to take place.

I do think it is important to remember that King did not die simply as a liberal speaker of liberal nostrum of equality and dignity and humanity, but he died as a champion of freedom and equality of poor people. He was simply a Christian humanist who really tried to put those principles into play in a society that viewed itself as being about Judeo-Christian values and humanitarian values. At the time he was struck down by an assassin’s bullet, he was challenging that and calling people to task for their hypocrisy.

Martin Luther KIng (third from left) and other civil right leaders during the March on Washington on Aug. 28, 1963 (photo by AFP/Getty Images)

Have we realized King's dream of racial equity?

King realized some success in terms of opening up the American political process to a more African-American representation, which meant that we finally had a chance to put a lot more Black people in Congress, have a lot more Black people become senators and governors, and even president. He also made it possible for more Black Americans to become middle class, to become professionals, to build businesses. But to a certain extent, the agenda of equality was also short-circuited by the apparent success of the civil rights movement.

Because folks could see there was visible change, it was possible for people to say, “OK, we have accomplished King’s dream. We’ve gotten there. We’ve made it to the promised land.” At the same time that that’s true, there is persistent inequality, underemployment, unemployment, as well as racist behaviours, especially on the part of police forces versus Black youths and Black men in particular. It might sound incendiary, but if you’re a Black American – especially Black male, especially young Black male – and you do not feel that you have the right to move unhindered and unhampered through a city street, drive down a particular road, buy a house wherever you might be able to afford, or aspire to ascend in whatever institution or organization in which you find employment, and if you feel like your life is in constant jeopardy because someone might feel that you are not where you are supposed to be and they can get away with shooting you – whether it’s an armed citizen or a police officer – then you’re still living in a police state.

This is where the teachings of Malcolm X continue to haunt the dream of Martin Luther King Jr.

While it’s extremely important to have that dream, and work for that dream, I think it’s also important to maintain a degree of Malcolm X realism, that some people who have power and privilege don’t want to give it up and are quite prepared to continue to oppress others “by any means necessary” in order to maintain their own hegemony, their own high status within society. For that reason because of the entrenchment of notions of white supremacy, including the idea that Black people should not be permitted to occupy high office, earn high employment or enjoy high status outside of stereotypical entertainment and sports, it has left people feeling they are still in an unequal position. Keeping in mind that the election of someone who seems to be as president of the United States, quite OK with notions of white nationalism or white supremacy or simple racism against African-Americans, Latinos, Muslims – 50 years after King’s assassination this should also suggest that the dream of real equality and real liberty for all has not yet been achieved.

I would say this is a terrific moment now as we focus on this anniversary, especially for Americans of all backgrounds, to think about rekindling a mass movement that would bring together anti-sexist, anti-homophobic, pro-environmentalist, the anti-gun lobby, progressives and everyday citizens in the United States to turf out all the politicians who represent a backward, regressive, inhumane, environmentally destructive agenda. Vote them all out. Clean house and do it while chanting, “Remember Dr. King, Remember Dr. King.” In order to do that, you need to have a mass movement. You need to have a grassroots movement of the type that King inspired, a mass movement that would bring together Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, the folks opposed to wanton gun violence.

That would be the real legacy of Dr. King to have that kind of mass movement sparked and active right now. If anybody really want to get rid of what people consider regressive backward Republicans, they need to start educating the electorate now.

How should we embrace his message now, especially with the rise of white supremacists?

Look, the whole planet went through 500 years of white European control from the beginning of the 16th century to the beginning of the 21st century. That European Caucasian control of the entire planet, economically, politically and militarily, it had to include notions of white supremacy. Even though many nations are now free of obvious European control and are able to enjoy more self-determination, it doesn’t mean that the underlying ideology of white supremacy has disappeared. It’s still here. We see it in terms of carding here in Toronto where police officers want to stop somebody who happens to be brown or Black, and ask them to explain why they are where they are. This is because of the white supremacist view that Black people especially shouldn’t be able to enjoy freedom of mobility. Even though slavery is long over, it doesn’t mean the attitude that Black people should not be able to move freely has disappeared.

Same with stopping people for driving the wrong kind of car or living in the wrong kind of neighbourhood. The idea behind those notions, right here in Toronto, right here in Canada, is that Black and brown people should be poor. They should have to always justify their possessions, whether it’s an expensive car, expensive house or expensive neighbourhood by essentially demonstrating that we’ve been permitted to have these items because we’re understood to be OK, because otherwise we should be somebody’s employee, somebody’s peon, we should be somebody’s “slave.” Those attitudes, even though they’re not often voiced, still persist in our society. Canada, like the United States, was a slave-holding society. Just because we got rid of slavery, or the British Empire did in 1834, doesn’t mean that the attitudes that supported slavery disappeared. They’re still there. Just like the attitudes that oppressed Indigenous people. Residential schools may be long gone – that does not mean that the attitudes that allowed for residential schools have disappeared. Even though there may be physical advancement, progress, people are not walking around in chains anymore, people aren’t forced at gunpoint to do this or that, it doesn’t mean the underlying attitudes have disappeared.

That’s the struggle that exists now. If we really want to have real liberty and real equality, we have to overthrow all these notions that justify white privilege and white power.

I value being in Canada. I value the multicultural nature of our society, and I think we are going to become more and more multicultural, more and more hybrid, a Métis society. I think that is our future, a beautiful future that we need to nurture and protect, especially since the country adjacent to us seems to be going rapidly in the wrong direction.

Artists and scholars come together to re-tell history for Canada 150

ullahnor — Fri, 12 May 2017 17:16:43 +0000

Artists and scholars come together to re-tell history for Canada 150

ullahnor Fri, 05/12/2017 - 13:16

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Author Margaret Atwood and poet George Elliott Clarke are featured in public conversations at the National Gallery and University of Ottawa

Sean Bettam

Author legacy

Sean Bettam

Topic

City & Culture

Margaret Atwood

Canada 150

George Elliott Clarke

Indigenous

History

Humanities

Celebrated author and �ؿ�ζSM alumnus Margaret Atwood and U of T professor and poet George Elliott Clarke will join other renowned artists and scholars to challenge and re-narrate the history of Canada in its sesquicentennial year.

In two separate public events in Ottawa, Atwood and Clarke, together with artist Kent Monkman, cellist Cris Derksen, and environmentalist Leah Kostamo will take the stage to present their work for Restorying Canada: Religion and Public Memory. The three-day conference will also bring in scholars from across Canada and beyond to examine how religion has been remembered and forgotten in Canada's history.

Two public events anchor the conference:

Decolonizing the Canon on Thursday May 18 at the National Gallery of Canada features Clarke – Canada’s poet Laureate and the E.J. Pratt Professor of Canadian Literature in U of T's department of English – Juno Award-nominated Cree-Mennonite cellist Derksen, and internationally renowned visual artist Monkman. Each artist will work within his or her genre to challenge what it means and feels to remember the country’s history, and re-narrate and resist the colonial story of Canada.
The Future of Religion in Canada: Utopia or Dystopia? on Friday May 19 at the University of Ottawa features a conversation between Atwood and Christian environmental activist Kostamo. It explores the rich, complex portrayal of religion as a powerful, yet ambiguous force with the potential to both renew and shatter, bringing liberation and oppression, hope and fear. While Atwood’s writing across five decades – including the now televised The Handmaid’s Tale – explores the past, present and dys/utopian future of religion in Canada, Kostamo provides a counter example of religious commitments to environmental restoration through the lens of Christianity.

“The public events offer a curated provocation to the conference proceedings,” said Professor Pamela Klassen of U of T's department for the study of religion, who co-organized the conference with Emma Anderson at the University of Ottawa and Hillary Kaell at Concordia University for Canada 150. “We’re in a time when Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale is being revitalized on screen, while its warnings about threats to women’s freedom are coming true in legislatures and houses of congress around the world.

“My hope is that audiences will gain a deeper understanding of how religion has shaped the ways we imagine and inhabit the nation of Canada, at a moment when reconciliation, decolonization, nation-to-nation relations with Indigenous nations, and the spectre of new kinds of religious prejudice are all in play,” said Klassen.

Tickets for Decolonizing the Canon and The Future of Religion in Canada: Utopia or Dystopia? are $18 for adults and $12 for students, plus taxes, for each event.

After Dallas: Professor George Elliott Clarke on human rights, protest and law enforcement

krisha — Fri, 08 Jul 2016 20:26:24 +0000

After Dallas: Professor George Elliott Clarke on human rights, protest and law enforcement

krisha Fri, 07/08/2016 - 16:26

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At the rally in Dallas, Texas, on Thursday, July 7, 2016 to protest the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile before police were killed (LAURA BUCKMAN/AFP/Getty Images)

George Elliott Clarke

Author legacy

George Elliott Clarke

Topic

George Elliott Clarke

George Elliott Clarke, Canada's parliamentary poet laureate, is the E.J. Pratt Professor of Canadian Literature at the �ؿ�ζSM. An internationally-renowned poet and scholar and the recipient of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Achievement Award, his books include Execution Poems and Whylah Falls.

The murder of Dallas, Texas, law enforcement officers was a cowardly, terrorist response to a recalcitrant, public policy issue: Must black men – especially – inhabit a police state while almost everyone else gets to live in a democracy?

The police repression of black men is not as bad in Canada as it is in the United States, but we have lots of studies that reveal, right here in Canada, how black men – and Indigenous men – are more likely to be harassed, more likely to be arrested, more likely to be beaten or killed while in a dispute with law enforcement, and more likely to be falsely convicted. I argued two years ago in an Op-Ed piece, law enforcement still behaves via-a-vis – black men especially – that we do not have rights to move freely about in the society; that, in brutal fact, the pass laws of "slavery days" still apply to us, for whites feel complete freedom to ask – anytime – who we are, where we're from, where we live, what is our business in any particular place, and, even, "Is that [nice] car really yours?"

While the deaths of white officers and black not-even-suspects (officially) are grievous, we should remember as far back as December 21, 2014, that a lone black gunman shot dead two white New York City police officers in "revenge" for the earlier death-at-police-hands of Eric Garner. The execrable shootings/assassinations of the Dallas, TX, officers can be linked to the new York City incident of 18 months ago.

But we can go back even further here: No less a figure than Malcolm X (1925-65) commanded African-Americans to pick up arms to protect themselves against the violence of white police, who, we should remember, were frequently violators of African-Americans' civil rights during the Civil Rights Movement (1955-65), and were even, sometimes, members of the Ku Klux Klan – a Caucasian, terrorist organization that was mobilized to prevent true black liberation from slavery....Malcolm X's preaching helped to lead to the establishment of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (note the last word of their official name) in 1966, and most of the Panther political programme (when it wasn't calling for free food and free schools for kids) was calling for armed self-defence against the "occupying army" of all-white-police officers in black "ghettoes."

Of course, we should also remember that the BPP demand for militancy and armed self-defence invited the reaction of the Nixon Administration which tacitly unleashed a wave of unprovoked (white) police assassinations of Black Panther Party acolytes, from approximately 1969 to 1973, driving many Panthers into prison (on trumped-up charges) or into exile or into very premature graves. The US Government named this program, "COINTEL," for "counter-intelligence," but its real aim was to prevent the rise of a "messianic" black leader in the U.S. Some have speculated that the assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in 1968, was itself a result of a de facto COINTEL program....

We should also remember here that, sadly but cyclically, human rights and civil rights advances in the U.S. have often occurred as a result of protest – and pursuant brutality. The union movement succeeded more-or-less peaceably in Canada (via elections of the United Farmers of Ontario and then the first-term Hepburn Ontario Government and then Prime Minister Mackenzie King's tilt to-the-Left in the 1945 federal election), but succeeded with much more bloodiness in the U.S., including union infighting, such as that which led to the assassination of Joseph Yablonski in 1970, not to mention the Haymarket Square bombing in Chicago in May 1886, which led to the displacement of Labour Day from May 1 to the current September (and essentially apolitical) holiday. (Note: Police agents provocateurs may have been responsible for the Chicago terrorism of 130 years ago.)

Another case in point: A Buddhist priest set himself afire in 1963 to protest the corruption and anti-Buddhist violence of the corrupt, nominally Catholic regime of the U.S.-backed Republic of Vietnam. But the first public protest in the U.S. against the Vietnam War was the self-immolation of a Quaker Christian – Norman Morrison – on the steps of the Pentagon in November 1965. What I'm getting at here is, sadly, in the American Republic, with Dr. King's salient example as an exception, violence has been the (distracting) norm in drawing attention to significant public issues: Think of John Brown and his violent – terrorist – campaign against U.S. slavery.

Apart from the Riel rebellions and the FLQ terror campaign of the 1960s, Canadians have been spared the kind of violence that wracks the American Republic (and we might remember that Dallas, TX, is also where a sitting U.S. President was assassinated by a fellow American). Our political system is more flexible, for one thing: Only in Canada could the Parti Quebecois go from being a church-basement 'party" in 1968 to achieving power in Quebec in 1976; similarly, the Reform Party, Wild Rose Party, Confederation of Regions Party, and Social Credit Party – not to mention the New Democratic Party – have all been able to find a level of public support, which makes extremism less "necessary" and politically motivated violence less likely.

Still, none of the above precludes aggrieved minorities – whether the "Sons of Freedom" in the 1950s or some Quebecois in the 1960s and/or Native activists at Kanasetake, QC, in 1990 – from instituting State-shaking violence as a means of seeking redress to fundamental disparities. Word to the wise – and to the socially conscious....

I dedicate these remarks to the memory of the great Africadian socialist Burnley "Rocky" Jones.

I end with King: "We shall overcome."

(For more on the events in Dallas, Minnesota and Louisiana, read a Q & A with U of T experts)

Professor George Elliott Clarke named parliamentary poet laureate

sgupta — Wed, 06 Jan 2016 10:52:35 +0000

Professor George Elliott Clarke named parliamentary poet laureate sgupta Wed, 01/06/2016 - 05:52

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As parliamentary poet laureate, Professor George Elliott Clarke (pictured above in a photo by Jim Ryce) will “speak beauty to power,” says Professor Richard Greene

Topic

George Elliott Clarke

Faculty of Arts & Science

English

Awards

Listen to Clarke discuss the Poetry Map in an episode of the Cities Podcast

“He's a splendid and dramatic poet, a deeply knowledgeable and impassioned advocate for poetry, a fine professor and a rivetting performer of his own work, which often foregrounds and brings vividly to life hitherto neglected voices from the long history of Nova Scotia's Black community,” said Lanthier. “He is also a tremendously warm and generous person.

“I read with him in New York last year (with other poets whose work had appeared in Best Canadian Poetry 2014) in the series at Bryant Park and at storied KGB bar, as well as in Toronto with a group of poets writing in Chinese and English, at Riverdale library. On each occasion, his signature vivacity, empathy and enthusiasm lit up the gathering.

“We are lucky to have him in this new role.”

Below, see a Storify of social media posts about the appointment, curated by Sarah Khan:

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U of T alum and adjunct prof Anne Michaels named Toronto poet laureate

sgupta — Wed, 14 Oct 2015 15:33:03 +0000

U of T alum and adjunct prof Anne Michaels named Toronto poet laureate sgupta Wed, 10/14/2015 - 11:33

Arthur Kaptainis

Author legacy

Arthur Kaptainis

Pier Giorgio Di Cicco

George Elliott Clarke

Faculty of Arts & Science

Subheadline

All five poets laureate have been members of U of T community

The �ؿ�ζSM has a lock on local couplets – again.

Anne Michaels, an adjunct professor of English and former Barker Fairley Distinguished Visitor in Canadian Studies at University College, has been named Toronto’s poet laureate. She follows George Elliott Clarke, the E.J. Pratt Professor of Canadian Literature at U of T.

“Toronto is fortunate to embrace dozens of languages and has an invaluable literary history,” Michaels said in a statement released by the City of Toronto. “I am looking forward to celebrating our many voices, old and new."

The native Torontonian graduated from U of T in 1980 and launched her literary career in 1986 with The Weight of Oranges. Miner’s Pond (1991) received the National Magazine Award, the Canadian Authors Association Award for Poetry and a nomination for the Governor General's Award.

Michaels’s most recent volume of poetry, Correspondences (2014), is an elegy to her father, replete with references to 20th-century artistic and intellectual figures. Published with folded pages in the manner of an accordion, the book was shortlisted for the 2014 Griffin Poetry Prize.

Among her most acclaimed works is the 1996 novel Fugitive Pieces, which won the Trillium Book Award, the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award, the Guardian Book Prize and Orange Prize for Fiction (U.K.) and America’s Lannan Literary Award for Fiction. The movie based on this book was screened on the opening day of the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival.

Michaels is Toronto’s fifth poet laureate; all five have been members of the U of T community.

First in 2001 was U of T alumnus and former Victoria College English instructor Dennis Lee. He was followed by Pier Giorgio Di Cicco, an alumnus who became a visiting professor in the St. Michael’s College graduate department of Italian studies; and Dionne Brand, an alumna of both U of T and OISE.

The university has figured in the work of the poets it has touched or generated. Fugitive Pieces, a novel about war and memory, includes as a major character Athos Roussos, a geologist who escapes Greece during the Second World War to take a position at U of T. Michaels has called the war the “formative event” for people of her generation.

Michaels’s interest in multiculturalism and language is manifested in this novel particularly in the figure of Jakob Beer, an orphan from Nazi-occupied Poland whose acquisition of Greek and English erases his memory of the Holocaust.

"With that book, I was asked am I Jewish, am I Catholic, am I Greek,” Michaels told The Guardian newspaper in 2009. “And, yes, I did resist answering, because I really feel that to answer would be a cop-out."

Michaels, who founded the long-distance creative writing program at U of T's School of Continuing Studies, was named one of the inaugural University College Alumni of Influence in 2012. Her term as poet laureate, to be confirmed by Toronto City Council in November, will last for three years.

Clarke is delighted by the nomination of Michaels and the link to U of T.

"Whenever I teach Canadian Poetry, I always point out the strong connection between Canada's most appreciated Eglish-language poets and the �ؿ�ζSM," he told U of T News.

"After all, this was the home of poet E.J. Pratt and the great critic Northrop Frye. Together, they nurtured the finest poets of the mid-20th century, including Margaret Atwood and Jay Macpherson, and made Canadian poetry a distinctive, valued genre for creativity and for study.

"Anne Michaels is an heir to the marvelous legacy engendered by this institution. Perhaps alumni will now raise funds for a Poets’ Tower to join the splendid Soldiers’ Tower on our campus."

Organizations and individuals took to social media to congratulate Michaels and thank Clarke for his services. Among them was mayor and U of T alumnus John Tory, who tweeted: "I want to thank George Elliott Clarke for serving as Toronto's Poet Laureate & all he’s done to promote our city’s diverse voices."

Read the Toronto Star story on the poet laureate

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