... I've associated MLK Day with his assassination, so I was surprised to see this post.

And he was only 39. "... when MLK was your age, he was dead," as somebody said of Napoleon to a general.

[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

Although there are many who would like us to. But there are more of us, who will continue to insist on the truth.

You chose the perfect picture.

So, it's forty years that my heart has been breaking all over again on this day. Yes, it is rather biblical.

I just heard a report on NPR on observances in Memphis. There was a long quote from McCain, a brief word that Clinton was campaigning in Memphis and Obama was campaigning in another state. Nothing of what either Clinton and/or Obama said.

So, how do we take over our local PBS stations and start holding them for this trash?

he would have been covered in this day and age..i shiver to think.

(and his economic and antiwar stuff is so strong and relevant today--& still very scary to many who only want to hear "uplifting/unity" stuff.)

we couldn't have civil rights movement today, the press would sabotage it

How I got over. King's last objective was the eradication of poerty. The end of rampant militarism, the end of racism and an ethical use of the new and developing technologies. He anticiapted the free market mania in cautioning against naked capitalism and the profit motive as the measure of what is true and good. These are the things we need to rememeber. These are the things for which we will be held to account.

Brother Martin Class 1948

"... If the United States makes progress in closing the black-white income gap at the same rate it has since King was assassinated, there will be income equality in 537 years. If the racial wealth divide closes at the same rate as it has since 1983, it will take 634 years before African-American families have the same wealth as whites. ..." -- The Unrealized Dream: 40 Years After King's Assassination -- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-wei...

67-- "... "A nation that continues year after year to spend money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." ..." -- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-cohen...

Always has, always will.

And he was a truly great American, someone who had the courage to try to push this country to prove itself and its values, instead of simply telling it what it wanted to hear. Oh, to have someone like that now.

Oh, to have someone like that now

Sad thing is, I honestly thought Obama was that someone. That saddens me more than I have words for, b/c I had such hope that he would lead all of us to the promised land.

Bill Clinton for First Dude!!!

When I heard that King had been murdered, I was sitting with a small group of people secretly plotting to overthrow the government.

No, not that way; by an election. Robert Kennedy was gearing up a California campaign, and the established state Democratic Party was both stultified and untrustworthy for an insurgent effort; far too many ties to the national Democratic establishment.

To win, Kennedy needed a way to tap the formal structure for money and mailing lists while pulling together a parallel GOTV effort amongst the poor and minorities that the state establishment would not touch. We were plotting how to do just that.

The famous Memphis speech, where King spoke of seeing the Promised Land but knowing he would not reach it, had not yet made its way to California. What we discussed instead that afternoon was the text of a sermon he had given the previous Sunday at the D.C. National Cathedral. When I think back on the shock of that day, these are the words I remember:

First, we are challenged to develop a world perspective. No individual can live alone, no nation can live alone, and anyone who feels that he can live alone is sleeping through a revolution. The world in which we live is geographically one. The challenge that we face today is to make it one in terms of brotherhood.

-snip-

Through our scientific and technological genius, we have made of this world a neighborhood and yet we have not had the ethical commitment to make of it a brotherhood. But somehow, and in some way, we have got to do this. We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools.

We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way God’s universe is made; this is the way it is structured.

-snip-

Secondly, we are challenged to eradicate the last vestiges of racial injustice from our nation. I must say this morning that racial injustice is still the black man’s burden and the white man’s shame.

It is an unhappy truth that racism is a way of life for the vast majority of white Americans, spoken and unspoken, acknowledged and denied, subtle and sometimes not so subtle—the disease of racism permeates and poisons a whole body politic. And I can see nothing more urgent than for America to work passionately and unrelentingly—to get rid of the disease of racism.

Something positive must be done. Everyone must share in the guilt as individuals and as institutions. The government must certainly share the guilt; individuals must share the guilt; even the church must share the guilt.

-snip-

We must come to see that the roots of racism are very deep in our country, and there must be something positive and massive in order to get rid of all the effects of racism and the tragedies of racial injustice.

There is another thing closely related to racism that I would like to mention as another challenge. We are challenged to rid our nation and the world of poverty. Like a monstrous octopus, poverty spreads its nagging, prehensile tentacles into hamlets and villages all over our world. Two-thirds of the people of the world go to bed hungry tonight. They are ill-housed; they are ill-nourished; they are shabbily clad. I’ve seen it in Latin America; I’ve seen it in Africa; I’ve seen this poverty in Asia.

-snip-

I want to say one other challenge that we face is simply that we must find an alternative to war and bloodshed. Anyone who feels, and there are still a lot of people who feel that way, that war can solve the social problems facing mankind is sleeping through a great revolution. President Kennedy said on one occasion, "Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind." The world must hear this. I pray God that America will hear this before it is too late, because today we’re fighting a war.

I am convinced that it is one of the most unjust wars that has ever been fought in the history of the world. Our involvement in the war in Vietnam has torn up the Geneva Accord. It has strengthened the military-industrial complex; it has strengthened the forces of reaction in our nation. It has put us against the self-determination of a vast majority of the Vietnamese people, and put us in the position of protecting a corrupt regime that is stacked against the poor.

It has played havoc with our domestic destinies. This day we are spending five hundred thousand dollars to kill every Vietcong soldier. Every time we kill one we spend about five hundred thousand dollars while we spend only fifty-three dollars a year for every person characterized as poverty-stricken in the so-called poverty program, which is not even a good skirmish against poverty.

Not only that, it has put us in a position of appearing to the world as an arrogant nation. And here we are ten thousand miles away from home fighting for the so-called freedom of the Vietnamese people when we have not even put our own house in order. And we force young black men and young white men to fight and kill in brutal solidarity. Yet when they come back home they can’t hardly live on the same block together.

The judgment of God is upon us today. And we could go right down the line and see that something must be done—and something must be done quickly. We have alienated ourselves from other nations so we end up morally and politically isolated in the world. There is not a single major ally of the United States of America that would dare send a troop to Vietnam, and so the only friends that we have now are a few client-nations like Taiwan, Thailand, South Korea, and a few others.

-snip-

Let me close by saying that we have difficult days ahead in the struggle for justice and peace, but I will not yield to a politic of despair. I’m going to maintain hope as we come to Washington in this campaign. The cards are stacked against us. This time we will really confront a Goliath. God grant that we will be that David of truth set out against the Goliath of injustice, the Goliath of neglect, the Goliath of refusing to deal with the problems, and go on with the determination to make America the truly great America that it is called to be.

I say to you that our goal is freedom, and I believe we are going to get there because however much she strays away from it, the goal of America is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be as a people, our destiny is tied up in the destiny of America.

-snip-

And so, however dark it is, however deep the angry feelings are, and however violent explosions are, I can still sing "We Shall Overcome."

We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

We shall overcome because Carlyle is right—"No lie can live forever."

We shall overcome because William Cullen Bryant is right—"Truth, crushed to earth, will rise again."

“I will not yield to a politic of despair.”

As he so often did, King spoke in the first person while he set a standard for the rest of us to aspire towards. However dark the night may be, there is nothing for it but to rise up in the morning and gather together, to continue the struggle the best we can.

To keep from despair it is vital to understand that we are not alone. A CBS/NYT poll yesterday has 81 percent of respondents saying they believe "things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track," up from 69 percent a year ago and 35 percent in early 2002. Democrats have every reason to be hopeful regarding the November elections and progressive liberals have every reason to be hopeful that the tide of public opinion has turned, that we are poised now to move forward, to resolve the great challenges that confront us at home and abroad.

“I will not yield to a politic of despair.”

in the forest, at the edge of dawn
the mist was rising and soon would be gone
he was standing like a mountain of rock
in a world of sand that means a lot

so strong, so long
so strong, so long
i miss you brother
so strong, so long

in the paper, right on page one
everybody saw just what was being done
a man was saying it just like it was
made everybody buzz...

so strong, so long
so strong, so long
i miss you brother
so strong, so long

help out, help out
stop putting it down
help out, help out
see another sky
you are the hammer
you are the nail
too much to let go
and the grown men cry
and the grown men cry

in the garden, in the cool of the night
stands a preacher at the edge of the light
god is harping on a cricket's leg
sometimes a killer will not let you beg

so strong, so long
so strong, so long
i miss you brother
so strong, so long

march to selma, march to DC
hold your hands, sing the Holy "Tis of Thee"
ain't no blood crime that will not harden
kill the man in the garden

so strong, so long
so strong, so long
i miss you brother
so strong, so long

help out, help out
stop putting it down
help out, help out
see another sky
you are the hammer
you are the nail
too much to let go
and the grown men cry
and the grown men cry

in the forest, at the edge of dawn
the mist was rising and soon would be gone
he was standing like a mountain of rock
in a world of sand that means a lot

so strong, so long
so strong, so long
i miss you brother
so strong, so long

++++