My favorite MLK quote,

“Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism and militarism.”

How revolting that a bloodthirsty murderer like Obama and a noble man like King both received the Nobel Peace Prize. If he were alive today, he’d burn it.

I was very surprised to see that the newly unveiled monument honoring Dr. King depicts him standing in silence. I don’t know what to make of that. I had certainly expected a monument that would capture him in his full oratorical glory.

Dedication of a white monument for a black leader?  Maybe I’m missing
something, but that symbolism is incongruent to me.  There are several
monumental pharaonic statues in black and other colored stone.  They are no
less imposing because they are other than white.

Our “ideal” of the white statue was unknown to the Greeks, from whom we
presumably inherited this aesthetic.  They brilliantly colored their statues,
including painting in the irises into what are now blankly staring eyes.  The
color leached off during years of weathering or burial, so that when most of these statues were rediscoverd, they were white.  So the Renaissance sculptors all made white statues, because that was perceived to be the Classic Form.  White marble was used by the Greeks because it was available and easily worked.  They then painted or dyed it.  The Parthenon was not for the Greeks this white skeleton
we see now.  It was originally ablaze with color.  (See: 
http://www.elginism.com/20060225/335/)

The King monument does sanitize the real Martin Luther King Jr, but it doesn’t take much effort to discover a more realistic vision of the man.

I wrote a commentary this weekend in response to the “celebrations” surrounding the unveiling.  The basic point of the commentary is that Dr. King would be less inclined to participate in the ceremony, and more inclined to march on the White House, particularly with a black president in office.

Today I found a commentary by Jesse Jackson that I had missed when writing the original post.  Had I seen it, I would have referred to it, and I’ll recommend it as one of the writings you might wish to seek out.

His theme is, I’m happy to say, not inconsistent with my own—that Dr. King’s true legacy comes from “right action”.  Jackson doesn’t put it quite that way, but not so far off, either.

“Dr. King taught nonviolence, but nonviolence was not surrender.  We used our bodies as living sacrifices.  He took the sting out of jail cells and death.  No sacrifice is too great to achieve a higher moral purpose.

Perfect love casts our fear.  Dr. King was fearless.  He insisted that we see the humanity in our oppressors—but that we not accept the oppression.  We must protest, in disciplined, nonviolent but forceful demonstrations, and boycott, litigate, lobby and legislate, tying up the legislatures, filling up the jails.  We had to demand respect for our humanity, even as we appealed to the humanity of those who would beat and jail us.”

I’m thinking of the protests now taking place in front of the White House by opponents of the Oil Sands Pipeline as an example of the kind of right action that would gain Dr. King’s approval, and perhaps his participation.

Still, I can’t help but imagine that if, as Congressman Lewis said in his own recent comments, Dr. King’s message would still be the same today (a sadly demoralizing thought, that), he would take to the streets in opposition to those same “triple evils” that plague us still—poverty, injustice and war.  He’d likely also find new evils to inveigh against, such as the pervasive corporate culture that dominates everyday life in our world.

He might also pointedly ask why we would wait for him to take action.

For more see: http://corporateconstraint.blogspot.com .

Please think about this proposition:  Those who murder, use force and injure or deprive others in order to gain their own ends are lacking in a basic and vitally necessary human characteristic:  Empathy.
The ability to feel others’ pain, to project their imagination toward what it feels like to be the person(s) they oppose. 
  Perhaps the first requirement of nonviolent thought and action is empathy.  We recognize what it is, who possesses it and who does not, but beyond that we know little about it.  We don’t know whether it is inherited or learned; we have only a few hints as to how easily it is destroyed, and the sad results of that destruction—possibly in the form of PTSD and related post-violence syndromes.
  King was preeminently empathetic, as are all great humanists.  The fact that so many of us can turn away from helping to correct great injustices and right soul-destructive wrongs indicates that it might be a good idea to try to understand what is loosely labelled “empathy”—and to try establishing institutions that encourage it rather than continue supporting institutions that destroy it such as war, poverty, carelessness, ignorance and the incessant ego-centrism of “me-first”.
  This is no fresh news to anyone—but why do we almost never get around to talking about it, recognizing it as a “black hole” in humaan understanding—and often the more powerful the society, the blacker the hole.

“Maybe I missed something…

But I have yet to hear an apology from the FBI, and the
Republican party for what they did to Dr. King…”

They committed genocide against the first peoples and
then named sports teams after them.  They killed Kennedy
and gave him an eternal flame.  Then they killed his
brother.  They killed The Panthers and black struggle,
directly (MLK, Huey Newton) and indirectly (cocaine in
the inner city), now we have poster children for
acceptable black power (Powell, Rice). They killed
democratically elected governments in countless nations
and subsequently killed millions.  They spread depleted
uranium around, lest we forget agent orange.  They
killed over 3000 people in one giant charade, prelude
for a parade, to the ME, to kill some more.

They killed Liberty.  Don’t expect the beacon of
hypocrisy in NYC harbor to be torn down anytime soon.

@ MackTN

If I misinterpreted you I apologize. 

“..MLK attained international status, held on to his
principles, didn’t commercialize himself, didn’t deal with
self-interest as a goal.  His organization and
congregations sustained his work.  But it was a very
different time then…  .. I simply wish we had more like
him.”

Cheers to that Sir.  Cheers to that.

Maybe I missed something…

But I have yet to hear an apology from the FBI, and the Republican party for what they did to Dr. King…

He was treated as an enemy of the state, and our government controlled, by right wing Republicans, did everything they could to discredit Dr. King and his message. To intimidate him, and to slander him…

Until there is a full,complete and open investigation of the governments role in what our government did to Dr. King, there will never be any fitting memorials to Mr. King, and what he sacrificed for this country.

In their version of a sanitized, homogonized Version of Dr. King, they continue their attempts to destroy his vision for this country, while at the same time using him for their own ends.

Uh…was my writing jumbled?  Who was knocking Panthers & Malcom X?  Not
me. I agreed with the Panthers & Malcom X on self defense, not with MLK &
Gandhi who advocated total non violence.  Though no one really advocated
aggressive armed insurrection as a way to obtain civil rights.  As a fraction of
the population, we would have been annihilated.

My characterization of MLK as the last activist of integrity was indeed too
sweeping.  We still have a great many activists and organizers on the left who
work for very little money.  ACORN activists were paid very little and they were
slandered out of business.  The poor people they served have fewer resources
as a result.

My point about MLK was made with particular people in mind.  MLK attained
international status, held on to his principles, didn’t commercialize himself,
didn’t deal with self-interest as a goal.  His organization and congregations
sustained his work.  But it was a very different time then and not even
professional black people made much money.  His movement was a ministry
aligned with his spiritual beliefs.  I simply wish we had more like him.

“But selectively hearing him is better than not listening at all, as long as it doesn’t lead to a distortion of what he believed.”

Inherently, selectively hearing him leads to distortion.

EJ Dione’s article leads to distortion. If you liked this article, you probably won’t like Chris Hedges *Trolls* article.

This article is a troll .... and many of the responses confirm this.

@ mackTN

“Dr. King was the last man of integrity involved in
social justice.  Unlike those who call themselves
activists today, Dr. King did not profit from his work.
He accepted dinner, hospitality.  He died a pauper.”

There are no activists out there with integrity? 
Haven’t been since Dr. King?  That is simply absurd.

And who are these activist persons (of no integrity) who
are making money through their activism?  The notion of
‘professional activists’ crept into popular right wing
bitch-discourse at some point after Seattle, or perhaps
sooner.  No matter, it’s been bollocks all along.  I’m
still waiting to find out where I can send my resume to
obtain a job fighting for social justice and feeding my
family at the same time. 

So far as knocking the Panthers and Malcolm et al for
choosing to believe in defending yourself… It is rank
hypocrisy to say to someone who, trying to get up off
the ground while being repeatedly kicked, “It’s ok for
you to get up but you had better stay calm or else we
want you to reassume your position on the ground and
continue to be kicked.”  (We won’t hang out and watch of
course, we won’t challenge those doing the kicking,
we’re peaceful and we have safer places to be.)

I have always found his “Letter From the Birmingham Jail” to be more eloquent and more succinct than his more famous “I Have a Dream”. The latter was a more palatable for the general public vision while the former got right to the point.

We need more such as Dr. King today.

The promissory note section of his speech is a thrilling metaphor that runs
throughout, focusing on the economics of black life in the U.S.—a bad check,
marked insufficient funds.  Quite apt considering the black person started out
as not a person at all, but as livestock, chattel, property, investment. It seems
with this recession that we’ve backslid, not just the black person but the people
who work for a living, as corporate America purchases its politicians to defend
its interests over we the people.

Dr. King was vilified as extremist in his remarks as the Right likes to depict Rev
Wright.  He was accused of causing violence by getting Negroes so riled up over
their way of life.  It’s easy to smear a person, mischaracterize their work. Where
Rev King and, say, the Black Panthers differed was in the method of self-
defense. Dr. King, like Gandhi, did not believe in fighting back in terms of
matching weapon to weapon. The Black Panthers, Malcom X, believed in
defending yourself (like the NRA believes); if someone began shooting at you,
you were allowed to shoot back. Of course, Dr. King was right—shooting back
meant sure annihilation.  If you believed in the fight for civil rights, you had to
be willing to die, had to accept your likely death. 

Dr. King was the last man of integrity involved in social justice.  Unlike those
who call themselves activists today, Dr. King did not profit from his work. He
accepted dinner, hospitality.  He died a pauper.