Related: Slow Saturday Special: King-Sized Insult
"King's words were often met with hate and resistance during one of the nation’s most turbulent eras.
You know, the type of reaction you get now for questioning 9/11 or criticizing Israel.
King, who was born Jan. 15, 1929, was killed in 1968 at age 39.
Yes, I had forgotten how young he was since he seemed wiser than his years.
“So little of his real politics show up in these annual commemorations,’’ said Morgan State University professor Jared Ball. “Instead of actually reading what he wrote or listening to what he said, we pick catch phrases and throw his name around. We all feel for the tragic incident that took place in Arizona, but this is happening to people all over the world every day in one form or another.’’
In places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Palestine, among others.
--more--"
Also see: Message from the pulpit: Still much to overcome
On King holiday, honoring heroes
King’s legacy of peace lauded
King Day highlights a legacy of service
There is your catch agenda-pushing catch phrase, folks: service.
"As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they ask -- and rightly so -- what about Vietnam? They ask 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. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent." -- Martin Luther King, Jr., 4 April 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City --source--"
I'm doing my duty right here, dear readers.
