By Dianne Anderson

What’s being called the “I have a Scheme Speech” rallied tens of thousands of mostly whites in attendance to Glenn Beck’s side on the historic, if not hallowed, ground of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the place where he envisioned his dream of peace and civil rights.

Not far away, Al Sharpton’s annual commemoration of King’s legacy drew thousands, where Sharpton talked about the major distinction of philosophy between King and Beck.

The dichotomy is political as much as racial.

Beck and the Tea Party have openly supported states’ rights while rejecting federal intervention for more money to be spent on social poverty programs – the complete opposite of what Martin Luther King, Jr., advocated.

Following Beck's march, Sharpton spoke of the Tea Party’s support for states’ rights, and how Beck failed to mention civil rights in his speech, the foundation of King’s dream. Still, Blacks hold over double unemployment as whites, and jobs, housing and education are far out of reach.

“They think we showed up in ’08 and they’re betting on us not to show up now,” Sharpton said, referring to the upcoming elections, adding, “We’re coming out in ’010 and we’re not going to let you turn back the clock.”

Probably the most major philosophical difference is that King called for more federal government money to feed the poor and provide services for Blacks and the poor, versus the Tea Party, which wants federal government to keep out of states' rights.

“They ought to ask Lincoln why he fought against states’ rights and held the Union together,” Sharpton said at his rally. “The dream was never about states’ rights.”

Some political experts have tried to make sense of Beck and Tea Party thinking, labeling it “confused.”

The Tea Party event was co-sponsored by the National Rifle Association.

Over the past few weeks, Beck supporters argued that MLK was a registered Republican, which is true. But it was also at a time in history when the Republicans were more moderate, and to some extent pre-1950s, more socially liberal.

But from reconstruction slavery to about 1950, Blacks transitioned over to the Democratic Party as southern whites switched to the increasingly conservative Republican Party, which supported states' rights. That opened the door for the South to create Jim Crow laws, and legally uphold segregation and racist gerrymandering.

Somehow, it’s a piece of forgotten history.

Sharon Toji has worked tightly with the local Democratic Party over the decades, and said the whole basis for the Tea Party philosophy and the Glenn Beck rally was a farce.

“It’s exactly the opposite of what King advocated,” said Toji, a Democrat, and the chair of the 70th Assembly District Committee.

Even given Beck’s turnout, she said she’s been part of much larger events in the past that didn’t come close to that kind of play in the news. Her march before the Bush Administration invaded Iraq drew out nearly 100,000 in San Francisco, and she said that she was unable to find a picture of the protest anywhere.

There a tendency for mainstream media to puff up events and the number of people attending while glossing over other events, she said.

Regarding the Beck rally, she sees it as a twisting of MLK’s concept of government and justice.

“We really thought it was a desecration of Martin Luther King’s speech, that he [Beck] should try to pretend that his almost all white crowd of people were somehow involved in that anniversary. I thought it was offensive,” she said.

Just looking at the level of involvement also made her more aware of just how many people do not remember, or understand history.

King was killed at a time when he was planning to bring millions of poor people to camp out on the National Mall, an area by the Lincoln Memorial. He was calling for more government spending with $50 billion to the poor community.

“He was killed in Memphis, obviously trying to get justice for workers, who were garbage collectors,” she said. “King believed government was there to help people.”

Back then, Black unemployment was at about where it is now, 25 percent, as King called for a  “radical redistribution of economic and political power” to fix the problem of the growing national poor.

Melahat Rafiei, a political consultant and past president of the Orange County Democratic Party, said that she’s also interested to see how Democratic strategies will turn out this year, or if there will be a return to the kind of grassroots effort that helped get President Obama elected.

Being a minority--she’s Persian and her husband is African American--she said that they deal with racism on a regular basis, and that it’s easy to see those same elements exist in Republican conservatism that is overstepping normal political boundaries.

They’ve been about racializing issues that should be about more jobs, and the sacrifice of working to get the country back on its feet.

“To me when they’re standing in his way, when they’ve shown so little respect for the President, it is an issue of race to me,” she said.

“I hope voters will turn out, I hope they’ll take a look at the issues and realize what’s happening to our Congress and our Senate. What the Republican Party is really doing and standing for,” she said.

For more information on volunteering for the Democratic party, call Toji at (949)929-6512