Dr. Martin Luther King. Never Forget.

[Al B. Sure!]

Gate:

i was making that exact point except in fewer words. whereas you used a full sentence, i just said, "MLK was Jesus?"

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Albert Speer
where did i say King was a black nationalist?

I think I got that impression when you compared MLK to the Republicans.

[Ben Kenobi]

no. i've spent nearly every day and night for the past 15 years in philadelphia... and before then, i was in Alexandria/DC and Beirut.

That's a shame. I'm sure there are campgrounds in the Appalachians in Pennsylvania that would allow you to experience the night sky.

Citydwellers don't know what they miss unless they talk to country folk.

[Gatekeeper]

Hmm. You're an odd one, Speer. In that case, you should have phrased it as a statement, not a question.

[Al B. Sure!]

Gate:

questions get ones attention better... and if you're wrong, you can say you was just asking, not saying a statement you believe in

the intellectually superior make points with as few words as possible?

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Japher


That's BS, that was MLKs dream. Integration; that they would compete together, not that they would be forced to, but that they would choose to. Yet the left does nothing to encourage racial mixing or competition except handicapping (in a golf sense) racial minorities. I think you need to re-read that speech.

Segregation was not the only injustice of the society that MLK saw. He was also because of the society because of poverty. He believed in true equality, not just a society where the ratio of poor whites to blacks was equal to the ratio of rich whites to blacks.

[SlowwHand]

MLK wasn't for Blacks being given anything, except a chance.
He was for ALL having an equal chance, just as many of you have noted.

[Ben Kenobi]

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

[Japher]

the intellectually superior make points with as few words as possible?

and if I say nothing?

you ever notice how short Sloww's posts are?

He believed in true equality, not just a society where the ratio of poor whites to blacks was equal to the ratio of rich whites to blacks.

What?! That's inane, and I don't believe that one bit. The problem with most people is that they think equality means equal success... All MLK wanted was a chance for everyone to succeed. Equal Opportunity, not equal success. Equality, when used to indicate equal success, is such a misguided word.

[SlowwHand]

I'm not really sure how you meant that reference of me, but I'm going with the complimentary aspect.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
MLK wasn't for Blacks being given anything, except a chance.
He was for ALL having an equal chance, just as many of you have noted.

This is wrong. The question is, "Is it the liberal, or conservative media that lies, or is it both."

The Martin Luther King You Don't See On TV

By Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon
It's become a TV ritual: Every year in mid-January, around the time of Martin Luther King's birthday, we get perfunctory network news reports about "the slain civil rights leader."

The remarkable thing about this annual review of King's life is that several years -- his last years -- are totally missing, as if flushed down a memory hole.

What TV viewers see is a closed loop of familiar file footage: King battling desegregation in Birmingham (1963); reciting his dream of racial harmony at the rally in Washington (1963); marching for voting rights in Selma, Alabama (1965); and finally, lying dead on the motel balcony in Memphis (1968).

An alert viewer might notice that the chronology jumps from 1965 to 1968. Yet King didn't take a sabbatical near the end of his life. In fact, he was speaking and organizing as diligently as ever.

Almost all of those speeches were filmed or taped. But they're not shown today on TV.

Why?

It's because national news media have never come to terms with what Martin Luther King Jr. stood for during his final years.

In the early 1960s, when King focused his challenge on legalized racial discrimination in the South, most major media were his allies. Network TV and national publications graphically showed the police dogs and bullwhips and cattle prods used against Southern blacks who sought the right to vote or to eat at a public lunch counter.

But after passage of civil rights acts in 1964 and 1965, King began challenging the nation's fundamental priorities. He maintained that civil rights laws were empty without "human rights" -- including economic rights. For people too poor to eat at a restaurant or afford a decent home, King said, anti-discrimination laws were hollow.

Noting that a majority of Americans below the poverty line were white, King developed a class perspective. He decried the huge income gaps between rich and poor, and called for "radical changes in the structure of our society" to redistribute wealth and power.

"True compassion," King declared, "is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."

By 1967, King had also become the country's most prominent opponent of the Vietnam War, and a staunch critic of overall U.S. foreign policy, which he deemed militaristic. In his "Beyond Vietnam" speech delivered at New York's Riverside Church on April 4, 1967 -- a year to the day before he was murdered -- King called the United States "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today."

From Vietnam to South Africa to Latin America, King said, the U.S. was "on the wrong side of a world revolution." King questioned "our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America," and asked why the U.S. was suppressing revolutions "of the shirtless and barefoot people" in the Third World, instead of supporting them.

In foreign policy, King also offered an economic critique, complaining about "capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries."

You haven't heard the "Beyond Vietnam" speech on network news retrospectives, but national media heard it loud and clear back in 1967 -- and loudly denounced it. Time magazine called it "demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi." The Washington Post patronized that "King has diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people."

In his last months, King was organizing the most militant project of his life: the Poor People's Campaign. He crisscrossed the country to assemble "a multiracial army of the poor" that would descend on Washington -- engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience at the Capitol, if need be -- until Congress enacted a poor people's bill of rights. Reader's Digest warned of an "insurrection."

King's economic bill of rights called for massive government jobs programs to rebuild America's cities. He saw a crying need to confront a Congress that had demonstrated its "hostility to the poor" -- appropriating "military funds with alacrity and generosity," but providing "poverty funds with miserliness."

How familiar that sounds today, more than a quarter-century after King's efforts on behalf of the poor people's mobilization were cut short by an assassin's bullet.

As 1995 gets underway, in this nation of immense wealth, the White House and Congress continue to accept the perpetuation of poverty. And so do most mass media. Perhaps it's no surprise that they tell us little about the last years of Martin Luther King's life.

[Japher]

Maybe your right

I didn't say that, did I?

[Ben Kenobi]

How familiar that sounds today, more than a quarter-century after King's efforts on behalf of the poor people's mobilization were cut short by an assassin's bullet.

So he was assassinated just because he sided for poor people?

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi


So he was assassinated just because he sided for poor people?

He proposed a guaranted income equal to the median income.

[Kidlicious]

"If any of you are around when I meet my day, I don't want a long funeral. If you get somebody to talk, tell him not to talk too long. Tell him not to mention that I have a Nobel Peace Prize. That isn't important.

"I'd like someone to mention that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to give his life serving others . . . I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry. I want you to be able to say that I did try in my life to clothe the naked. I want you to say on that day that I did try in my life to visit those who were in prison. And I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity."

MLK Jr.