If There Were a 1% Debate… MLK vs. Romney

What would MLK do? What would MLK say?

There is very little evidence that MLK would have anything good to say about today’s Republican Party. Indeed – for many folks today’s Republican have gone about as low as you can go.

Here is a mash up of points by MLK and “Willard” Romney…

What Would King Do?

This from a website, “Campaign for America’s Future”, written by Terrence Heath -

MLK’s Dream Deferred

Dr. King’s words, invoked during President Obama’s inauguration, suggest what he would call us to remember and how he would challenge us today.

“As long as there is poverty in the world I can never be rich, even if I have a billion dollars. As long as diseases are rampant and millions of people in this world cannot expect to live more than twenty-eight or thirty years, I can never be totally healthy even if I just got a good checkup at the Mayo Clinic. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the way our world is made. No individual or nation can stand our boasting of being independent. We are interdependent.

“The ultimate measure of a man or woman is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. The true neighbor will risk his position, his prestige, and even his life for the welfare of others. In dangerous valleys and hazardous pathways, he will lift some bruised and beaten brother or sister to a higher and more noble life.”

But he would not stop there.

• Dr. King would be concerned that an already slow economic recovery is leaving black Americans behind.
• King concerned about the epidemic of black unemployment — that black unemployment is at 16.2%, compared to 9.2% for the general population, 17.5% for black men, and 41% for black youth.
• King would be outraged that one in three black children lives in poverty.
• King would be troubled that black households now have 20 times less wealth than white households.
• King be concerned about the backward mobility happening in the African American communities, as middle class families quickly lose ground in this recession — losing hard won gains, in a fraction of the time it too achieve them.
• King would denounce the attacks on public workers that are hitting blacks and women the hardest.
• King would stand with public workers in Wisconsin, who now have to choose between health insurance and feeding their children.
• Dr. King would be outraged that the “welfare reform” of the 1990s is leaving more people in poverty today.
• Dr. King would scorn a recovery where CEO pay soars 27 percent, while virtually no jobs are created.
• King would denounce the GOP’s exploitation of racial and economic anxiety, and denounce Democrats just as loudly for failing to offer much of value to working-class whites.
• King would stand today where he stood then: with working families who are struggling in this recession, losing ground while our government seems content to let it happen.
• Dr. King would deliver the full-throated challenge to the status quo that many Americans are longing to hear.

It was popular in Right Wing circles for a while to try and steal from MLK’s words to justify their perverted logic. Fortunately that level of insanity has largely ceased, if for no other reason than the explosive nature of the “conversations” that typically followed.

Funny thing is, I don’t think King would be fighting just for the poor, and lower middle class in America right now… I think he would be fighting to change a system which has become so perverted there is no reasonable expectation of living as well as our parents did – or being able to hold a job even after pushing all the right buttons along the educational highway while CEOs and Wall Street Barons make billions in bonuses and salary.

Yeah…Something is wrong here.

 

 

Some Issues With Martin Luther King Memorial Surface

Taking a few words at their meaning, out of context with the events, or in some cases hundreds of words surrounding them is a recipe for disaster. In particular, the Rev. Martin Luther King, whose speeches and collective will driven by the righteousness of our cause shook our national psyche to it’s very foundations, left us with a number or speeches and written words left us with a number of “quotable moments” which cannot be distilled without context.

My parents, being educators collected a number of King’s Speeches and much of his oratory on old 33 1/3 RPM records allowing us to go back and review and rehear his speeches, discussions, and debates again and again. I would guess that well North of several thousand published works document the Civil Rights period, making it, WWII, and the Great Depression the most documented and detailed events of the past century.

So it is a little distressing when they get it wrong on the Memorial…

At King ceremony, a chance to bend toward justice

 

The arc of a mistake is long, and it now stretches from the Oval Office over to the Mall.

An error has been etched in marble on the grand Martin Luther King Jr. memorial that was to be dedicated Sunday, on the 48th anniversary of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Some of King’s speeches and writings have been inscribed in the memorial. But one of the sayings on the wall by the Tidal Basin is incorrect — or incomplete — in its attribution.

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

According to David Remnick’s biography of Obama, that is the president’s “favorite quotation.” Obama brought the idea back into present-day parlance and even had it sewn into the rug in the Oval Office when he redecorated last year. But as I wrote on this page last September, King is not the source of that quote.

The Comic Book Which Rocked the World

Apparently the hottest reading in Egypt and other parts of the Middle East right now is a comic book…

Only instead of phantasmal ”super-heroes” with otherworldly super-powers, this book is about normal folks, a real “super-hero” who inspired with words and faith, and a key event in American Civil Rights – The Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story (Visit this site to read the books in English, Arabic, or Farsi)

HAMSA, in conjunction with our parent organization AIC, is proud to announce the release of a groundbreaking Arabic edition of a 50-year-old comic book on Martin Luther King and the power of nonviolence. Several thousand copies were printed in Cairo, as part of an effort spearheaded by AIC-Egypt Director Dalia Ziada (right). They are being distributed across the Middle East.

Called “The Montgomery Story,” the comic book was published in 1958 and helped inspire the American civil-rights movement in the 1960s. In 2008, it was translated and designed by young reformers in the Mideast. It features full-color panels depicting the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a campaign to end segregation on buses in the capitol of Alabama. The comic book ends with a section on “how the Montgomery Method works,” outlining essential techniques of nonviolence.

After an initial run of just 2,500 books – the Montgomery Story and King’s message has caught on like wildfire throughout the Middle East. Copies are available online, and are being actively distributed electronically by bloggers across the Internet.

The Arabic comic book has now been distributed in print and on-line to a network of young activists and bloggers throughout the Middle East, including Algeria, Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Yemen. Feedback has been enthusiastic. At a book fair in the Egyptian industrial city of Mahalla, one woman grabbed the comic book with passion and scanned the cover, asking, “Is this Gamal Abdel Nasser?”

A Farsi version of the comic was rushed into production in June of 2009 as post-election protests were erupting. Translators in Iran helped put it together in a week, and the comic was soon being distributed digitally. The Montgomery Bus Boycott had resonance in Iran with the 2005 Tehran bus protests, which made headlines when one trade unionist, Mansour Osanloo, had his tongue cut by members of the Islamic Republic for seeking improved working conditions for his fellow bus drivers.

As with the violence in Iran, “Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story” cautioned that brutality often accompanies steps towards peace. Scenes of a Ku Klux Klan parade, a cross burning, and the bombings of Negro churches and homes were vividly depicted within its pages. An impassioned King is seen imploring an angry crowd:

“Please be peaceful. We believe in law and order. We are not advocating violence. I want you to love our enemies, for what we are doing is right, what we are doing is just – and God is with us.”

The Revolution may not be televised… But it will cover the world.

BTW kiddies, this has also been translated into Vietnamese and Spanish…

Bernice King Rejects SCLC Leadership Job

Bernice King

In another meltdown, MLK daughter Bernice King has refused the leadership position at the Southern Christian Leadership Council her father founded. The organization has recently been riven by infighting and scandal.

MLK daughter’s exit leaves SCLC’s future in doubt

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference is facing an uncertain future following the decision of Martin Luther King Jr.’s daughter to walk away from the embattled civil rights organization.

The Rev. Bernice King said this week that she would not take the helm of the group that her father founded in 1957 and that elected her president in 2009.

The once-proud organization has split into two factions, had its finances scrutinized and saw its former chairman indicted last week on theft charges.

Former United Nations Ambassador Andrew Young says the group might have run its course and that Bernice King made a wise decision. He says “we should’ve closed it down years ago.”

Young was a close adviser to Martin Luther King Jr., as the group led nonviolent protests for equality for African-Americans and social justice.

Rejecting the Hate on the 28th

Ed hosts Al Sharpton to discuss the March to reject Beck’s KKK Rally on the Mall on the 28th of August, the anniversary of the MLK “I Have a Dream” Speech.

If you can – be there in the spirit of King and the Freedom Riders.

Alan Grayson And Al Sharpton Talk About the GOP…, posted with vodpod

Now in case you missed it, or have been living in right wing hate land where the local provider doesn’t carry anything except Faux News…

War in the Streets, DC Aug 28th

This one is an invitation to a disaster…

Beck/Palin rally permit approved

The National Park Service said Thursday that it has approved the permit for the Aug. 28 Glenn Beck/Sarah Palin rally at the Lincoln Memorial.

Park Service spokesman Bill Line said the permit indicates that organizers expect 300,000 people to attend. Line said it is a “fixed rally” without a march. The rally will go from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

The park service is processing a permit request for a counter demonstration and rally by the Rev. Al Sharpton on the same day along Independence Avenue, south of the memorial. Line said the Sharpton rally organizers list 3,000 expected attendees on their permit request.

11 Martin Luther King Quotes

Sometimes it’s good to go back and review a few lessons from the Master. In that vein – 10 +1 Quotes from MLK -

1. Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.
2. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant. –Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech, Dec. 10, 1964
3. Let no man pull you low enough to hate him.
4. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars… Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.
5. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.
6. When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.
7. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. –letter from Birmingham jail, April 16, 1963
8. The good neighbor looks beyond the external accidents and discerns those inner qualities that make all men human and, therefore, brothers. –”Strength to Love”
9. I submit to you that if a man hasn’t discovered something he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.
10. The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. –”Strength to Love”

And Number 11?

The one Mssrs Robertson and Limbaugh, and a bunch of their ilk, should have tattoed to their foreheads -

Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man’s sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.

Ted Kennedy on the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

more about “Ted Kennedy on the Assassination of M…“, posted with vodpod