Today is the 47th anniversary of the March on Washington, marked by Martin Luther King, Jr's "I Have a Dream" speech (which he had delivered in a somewhat adapted version earlier that summer at a rally of hundreds of thousands in downtown Detroit). Since then, that speech has been credited as support for any number of radically differing views on politics, education, urban life, and policy. Here's what's resonating with me today:
From ColorLines:
We have clung desperately to its promise and held it up as a rose-tinted screen against King’s core message: that before we can have harmony, we must first have justice.
... His movement would not reach for the unity so often invoked today while looking past the fact that a quarter of black households live in poverty and that more than 15 percent of black workers are unemployed. It wouldn’t look past the yawning gap in wealth between white and black families—a nearly ten-fold spread. That wealth is what creates the opportunity King fought for—the ability to make it through school without life-crippling debt, to invest in both a new career and a new family at the same time, to weather the 2001 recession without taking out subprime loans that ended in foreclosure and further loss of wealth.
King’s movement wouldn’t—and didn’t—prioritize comity in Washington or the electoral future of the Democratic Party over righting these sorts of wrongs. It wouldn’t—and didn’t—say, well, we’ve got an “ally” in the White House so let’s not make too much noise about the injustices unfolding in our neighborhoods every day. It wouldn’t—and didn’t—care more about political pragmatism than the fact that record numbers of families are starving.
And here's vintage ill Doctrine - "Ten OTHER Things Martin Luther King Said:"
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