Anniversary of Dr. King’s Assasination
While many of us are celebrating Easter, Passover, baseball season or at least the fact that this long-coming spring is finally here, we also take a few minutes to remember that on April 4, 1968, Dr.Martin Luther King was assassinated at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee. He was in Tennessee helping the city’s sanitation workers to get a living wage and safer working conditions. That’s important to remember — all too often Dr, King is remembered for his fight for Civil Rights for African Americans — with little remembrance of his equally compelling and provocative work to eliminate poverty and also to end the Vietnam War. Take a look at Dr. King’s prophetic and moving speech the night before he was killed:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvPZKZErEfM[/youtube]
Bill Moyers and Michael Winship discuss the long term lack of progress in economic progress — as working families and poor communities are still those who bear the greatest brunt of bad economic policy.
Bob Herbert remembers not this speech, but the one Dr. King gave a year earlier at the Riverside Church, denouncing the US war in Vietnam. Herbert uses this speech to contemplate the symmetries with the current Afghanistan war. And to note that the morality of Dr. King’s position on the unjust Vietnam war doesn’t seem to have had any impact on those thinking about going to war and escalating the ones we are in.
Last, the Martin Luther King national memorial opens on the Mall on the fall of 2011.
Tags: Martin Luther King
I remember where I was when I heard that Dr. King had been assassinated. My mother and I were in the car going to the mall to get me some new Keds. She pulled the car over to a side street, turn up the radio and started crying. We went home and waited for the news to come on (Special Bulletins, as they were called in those days). This was a very sad day in our home because a voice for justice for ALL Americans had been silenced.
I’ve seen Jesse Jackson and Barak Obama speak in Rodney Square, and Michelle Obama speak at the Grand. May God protect this nation from the mis-guided will of the Texas Board of Education.
Martin Luther King if alive today would not be supporting Barack Obama. MLK was absolutely opposed to war and believed war spending was impoverishing the american people. While all budgets are being sliced and diced, not the Pentagon! While they take billions if not trillions to commit wars against poor, undeveloped nations without a declaration of War by the Congress, Obama is following in the footsteps of the Bush regime.
DemocracyNow.org had as a guest Philip Ralston a member of the High INternational Court. He stated that “Obama is committing war crimes” The use of drones run by the CIA is outside international law”. So when will the liberals demand this President stop these outragouse international wars against people who are uneducated, poor and living in fear of their lives. Is Obama any better than Bush? Is Obama’s foreign policy different than Bush? No! Its the same. While Bush had John Yoo to give the Bush regime cover for their war crimes, Mark Hoh is now the John Yoo attorney working for Obama and covering up the war crimes of Obama, Biden and Clinton.