Remembering the March

Fifty years ago, on Aug. 28, 1963, one of many American protests became the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, achieving worldwide acclaim with four simple words: “I have a dream.” The legend endures beyond memory from a dwindling number of witnesses, but no one alive that day anticipated its sweetly patriotic glow. Dr. Martin Luther King groaned under pressure, planning to say nothing like those four words. Bayard Rustin, a fabled pacifist in charge of logistics, prepared feverishly for the unknown. “If you want to organize anything,” he shouted to volunteers, “assume that everybody is absolutely stupid. And assume yourself that you’re stupid.” Some of Rustin’s helpers slapped together 80,000 cheese sandwiches. Others hauled 21 first-aid stations to outdoor spots along the stately National Mall.

The public girded for mayhem. NBC’s Meet the Press aired official predictions that it would be “impossible” for Negroes to petition in numbers without civic disorder. A preview in Life magazine surveyed Washington’s “worst case of invasion jitters since the First Battle of Bull Run.” The Kennedy administration quietly deployed 4,000 riot troops near downtown, with 15,000 paratroopers on alert. A District of Columbia order banned liquor sales for the first time since Prohibition. Local hospitals stockpiled plasma and canceled elective surgery to save beds. Most federal agencies urged employees to stay home. Eighty percent of private business closed for the day. A week ahead, to be safe, Major League Baseball postponed not one but two home games for the Washington Senators.

Early arrivals confounded these apprehensions. One jaunty teenager wafted along Pennsylvania Avenue on roller skates, finishing a week-long journey from Chicago. Trainloads of pilgrims spilled from Union Station singing spirituals. A CBS camera mounted high in the Washington Monument showed a panorama that swelled crowd estimates upward of 250,000. Bob Dylan strummed his new folk anthem, Blowin’ in the Wind, and the first black “airline stewardess” led cheers for progress. Rustin herded dignitaries briskly through a long program, allowing emcee A. Philip Randolph to introduce the final speaker ahead of his appointed time.

King looked over a vast spectacle. He had failed this closing task once before from these steps at the Lincoln Memorial, with many of the same civil rights leaders present.

He opened his address by reaching back to Lincoln. “Five score years ago,” King paraphrased, “a great American in whose symbolic shadow we stand today signed the Emancipation Proclamation.” Against Lincoln’s fidelity to national purpose, he threw up a clanging image of deadbeat history. “America has given the Negro people a bad check,” King proclaimed, “a check which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds.’ ” He said segregation stamped default on freedom’s core promise. Heartfelt voices cheered his raw illustrations along with his wishful hope not to find always that “the bank of justice is bankrupt.”

Suddenly King balked. He could not bring himself to continue his carefully speech.

King hesitated before a unique nation that was young and yet also the world’s seasoned pioneer in freedom.

“--I still have a dream,” King resumed. “It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed…” He took flight extemporaneously on rhetoric ingrained in him but new to the huge national audience. His cadence rose gradually through nine dreams of racial justice into a tenth, spiritual vision from the prophet Isaiah. “I have a dream, that one day every valley shall be exalted,” he said, in pulsing delivery. “Every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together!

“This is our hope,” King continued, pulling back from a glimpse of purified humanity. “This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith…” Like a jazz musician, he composed off this phrase a second riff on determination in pursuit of dreams. “With this faith,” it ended, “we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.” King dramatized that prospect by reciting the first verse of My Country, ’Tis of Thee, from sweet liberty and pilgrims to “Let freedom ring.”

Quickening again, he pushed his baritone into high register. “And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true,” King intoned. “So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire…Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!” Eleven times he launched variations on this third refrain, embracing not only the treasured landscape but also fearsome bastions of white supremacy. “Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi!” he shouted. “From every mountainside, let freedom ring!”

By then his distinctive voice enveloped the words in a furnace of warring release, fusing ecstasy with anguish and disappointment with hope.

“And when this happens,” King cried out, “when we allow freedom to ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up the day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!’ ”

***

The speech

James Blue's film The March (1963)

PBS clip / full video (expires 9/10/13)

355 dead after Syria 'chemical' attack

DAMASCUS, Syria » Syrian state media accused rebels of using chemical arms against government troops in clashes today near Damascus, while an international aid group said it has tallied 355 deaths from a purported chemical weapons attack earlier this week.

Doctors Without Borders said three hospitals it supports in the eastern Damascus region reported receiving roughly 3,600 patients with "neurotoxic symptoms" over less than three hours on Wednesday morning, when the attack in the eastern Ghouta area took place.

Of those, 355 died, said the Paris-based group.

what you'll pay under ObamaCare

Millions of Americans won't have to pay full price for their Obamacare health insurance next year. But just how much they'll have to fork over depends on a couple different things.

Thanks to subsidies from the federal government, which will help pay for health insurance on state-based exchanges starting in 2014, many low- to moderate-income Americans will get a break on their premiums.

 The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that 48% of Americans who buy individual insurance today would be eligible for subsidies. They would receive an average of $5,548, which would cover 66% of the price.

"The subsidies are pretty large for the people who get them," said Gary Claxton, vice president at the foundation, noting that a larger share of new enrollees in the individual market will be eligible for subsidies since they are likely to be lower income Americans who cannot not afford coverage now.

Here's how you qualify:

Your income: Anyone earning up to 400% of the poverty line will be eligible for a subsidy, which is up to $45,960 for an individual and $94,200 for a family of four.

The lower your income, the larger your subsidy. For instance, those making $17,235 a year will pay no more than 4% of income, or $57 a month, while those with incomes between $34,470 and $45,960 will pay a maximum of 9.5% of income, or $364 a month. The federal government will cover the rest.

Anyone earning more than $45,960 would be responsible for the entire tab on the Obamacare health plan of his choice.

In addition to premium subsidies, those making less than 250% of the poverty line, or $28,725 for a single person and $58,875 for a family of four, are eligible for extra subsidies to defray out-of-pocket costs, such as deductibles and co-payments.

 While the subsidies will certainly help, many folks may still think Obamacare is pretty pricey.

"For a lot of people who are barely making the rent and struggling to pay for groceries, even a very modest premium can seem out of reach," said Sabrina Corlette, senior research fellow at Georgetown's Health Policy Institute.

To see how large a subsidy you might receive, check out Kaiser's calculator.

[via roy on facebook]