I heard a bit of NPR's Martin Luther King Holiday coverage. Man, seems like MLK worked, sacrificed, and organized just so we could get Clinton and Obama (and Romney and Huckabee!) into the race for President! Hello - there is a war on, a violent, illegal, shameful US launched and run war that calls up Kings legacy beyond his "Dream" speech. How about some of his "Beyond Vietnam" speech? Here's an excerpt apropos of our current carnage in the desert:
"They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government."
It's sad that this erasure of the King who was antiwar, anti-poverty, and class conscious happens year after year. Consider this oldie (1995) from FAIR; it seems even more relevant today.
3 comments:
(applause)
Ditto!
Any media outlet that appropriates the name of MLK (and others) for their own purposes, however 'indirect', is not trustworthy as an authority.
The opening of the "I have a dream" speech is about the federal government giving the Blacks of America a check that's been returned for insufficient funds.
That quote is appropriate whenever we're headed towards a recession, but it's never broadcast over TV and radio.
"In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice."
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