By MIKE MAGEE
For getting older Boomers, it’s inconceivable to not hear echoes of Apartheid re-emerging with pressure 3/4 of a century after the battle for social justice right here and in far-off lands was totally engaged. The Musk assault, disguised as “efficiency” is little greater than stealing cash from the poor to present to the wealthy, and widens an already extraordinary earnings hole.
The assault is massive sufficient to draw condemnation from a dying Pope Francis, compelled to remind Trump, Musk and their enablers of the historic Jesus and the tenets of Liberation Theology.
Our faculty years within the 1960’s had been accompanied by chaos and disaster, and guided by basic Judeo-Christian values. My faculty, the Jesuit-led Le Moyne College, was activist to its core. The motion was championed by two priests, brothers Daniel and Philip Berrigan. With the assassinations of JFK, his brother Robert, and MLK; LBJ’s Nice Society legislative battles; the Civil Rights motion; and the Vietnam Battle, America was actually on fireplace on the time.
It was throughout this decade as nicely {that a} largely student-driven motion emerged to oppose Apartheid in South Africa and quickly unfold worldwide. A seminal characteristic of that motion was mass schooling and demonstrations with a objective of making financial stress on the leaders of South Africa by divestiture of all shares and investments that benefited the nation.
Elon Musk, born and bred in Pretoria, South African on June 28, 1971, is greater than slightly conversant in that historical past. The truth is, Silicon Valley, the place Musk would ultimately accumulate his huge wealth, can also be the house to Stanford College, a web site of nice significance to the Apartheid motion and the battle for human justice. Extra on that in a second.
The financial battle in opposition to Apartheid can be waged unabated for over 20 years, reaching a head on faculty campuses within the late Nineteen Seventies. The explosive development of protests adopted the Soweto Uprising, a infamous occasion within the Soweto Township exterior Johannesburg in June, 1976. South African police opened fireplace on kids demonstrating. The riots that adopted result in a stream of horrendous killings together with the murder of the South African Pupil Affiliation chief, Steve Biko, whereas in custody.
Nevertheless it was a sit-in, staged by Stanford college students to protest Apartheid, that redefined the wrestle by specializing in using college divestiture to ship an “financial punch” to the ruling minority.
A call made by the Stanford Board to oppose a Ford Motor Firm stockholder’s proposal to withdraw operations from South Africa supplied the set off. Stanford on the time held 93,950 shares of Ford Inventory. In response to the inaction, the Stanford college students launched a sit-in (captured by the Stanford Daily pupil newspaper under) contained in the Previous Pupil Union Constructing at 1 P.M. on Monday, Could 9, 1977. After they wouldn’t go away 5 hours later, 294 college students and college had been arrested together with the daughter of the U.S, Secretary of Labor, Jill Ann Marshall.
Six months later, after repeated demonstrations and disruptions on campus, the Board issued a statement that every of their trustees held a “deep aversion to the observe of apartheid”, and adopted a “South Africa-related moral funding coverage.” Nonetheless it took till 1985 for the college to “create formal funding insurance policies that explicitly set out tips for investing in South Africa-related corporations.”
The load of the world’s economic-induced isolation did ultimately prevail. Nelson Mandela was freed after 27 years of imprisonment, and shortly united in his efforts with President F.W. de Klerk to realize common suffrage. Collectively they shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize. And a free election adopted one yr later.
Many people immediately, in our 70s and 80s, as soon as once more really feel the acquainted strains of suppression and oppression within the conduct and actions of Musk, as he toggles emotionally between South Africa, the Silicon Valley, and Washington.
Violence is as soon as once more within the air, together with intense greed, cruelty, subjugation, and the focusing on of the economically oppressed majority. Oligarchal and super-aggressive, sadly there may be nothing new right here. Musk’s child-like conduct obsesses on a “super-hero” world and visions of Mars as he ravages the inhabitants of Mom Earth.
Given his life origins and path, would possibly he too reply to intensive financial isolation? And this time it isn’t Ford, however Tesla, that’s entrance and heart.
Musk owns 13% of Tesla stock (valued at $120B) which accounts for 34% of his complete wealth. His profiteering with Trump is apparent, seen, and accelerating. A Tesla Divestiture may very well be the most certainly solution to “ship us from evil” because it did with South African apartheid on April 27, 1994.
Wish to assist? 3 straightforward steps after which yet one more.
1. Verify – Does your group personal Tesla inventory in any kind?
2. If sure, set up a teach-in, to elucidate Divestiture (as in SA Apartheid), its’ function and utility.
3. Flow into and publish a web-based petition to ask your group to divest of all Tesla holdings.
. . . and yet one more, Copy and Share this publish with all of your contacts.
Mike Magee MD is a Medical Historian and common contributor to THCB. He’s the writer of CODE BLUE: Inside America’s Medical Industrial Complex. (Grove/2020).
