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Celebrating MLK: A drum major for justice

As I went from event to event Monday celebrating the birthday of Martin Luther King, I was struck by both the tribute and the distortion.

The tribute is remarkable. Martin Luther King held no public office. He amassed no great fortune. He led no victorious armies. He was arrested, harassed by the FBI, denounced and defiled. Yet today, we devote a holiday to his birth. Schoolchildren study his life and learn of his “dream.” No matter how much the culture seeks to domesticate him, the lessons are inescapable.

Standing up for justice is honorable. Racism is unacceptable. Nonviolence — challenging unjust laws and practices with nonviolent protest — is honorable. It is a testament to a confident country that we would so honor Dr. King.

But the distortion is real also. Martin Luther King grew revered once he was martyred, but he was the center of controversy when he was alive. Gallup polling showed that he grew more unpopular over the course of the 1960s. By 1968, a Harris poll showed that three-fourths of Americans and 55 percent of African Americans had negative views about him.

Silence remains betrayal -- King's legacy and Obama's wars

President Obama should know that his silence in regards to the military industrial complex is a betrayal of the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. Rev. King was assassinated on April 4, 1968 exactly one year after, to the day, he profoundly indicted U.S. militarism. Obama unleashed the same militarism in his so-called Afghanistan surge. King's Silence is Betrayal speech, given at Riverside Church in New York City on April 4, 1967, denounced a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift. send comments

In the middle of the largest economic downturn since the Great Depression, the lack of a Green New Deal and jobs programs that make the U.S. less energy dependent are leading to imperial folly in Central Asia. Obama's popularity erodes as he embraces the same militaristic policies that destroyed President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. As the architect of the War on Poverty, Michael Harrington, used to say, The War on Poverty was not lost in America, it was lost in the jungles of Vietnam.

A new Voter Bill of Rights: Make it part of the Ohio Constitution

Not since the abolitionists and suffragists rocked Ohio’s politics in the 19th and 20th centuries has a movement in the Buckeye State been so essential to human rights. The announcement last week that Ohio’s Legislative Black Caucus, aided by civil rights advocates, is backing The Voter Bill of Rights as an amendment to the Ohio Constitution is the single most important issue before in the 21st century. The proposed constitutional amendment would end the massive new Jim Crow purges of poor and black people Ohio has become notorious for in national elections.

The amendment would adopt the approach of the European Union and make voting a Constitutional right. Many Americans are shocked to discover that the right to vote is currently not an enshrined Constitutional right. Voting rights are often limited by the 50 different state governments that administer federal, state, and local elections.

The proposed voter bill of rights would assure that all qualified Ohio citizens have a right to cast a ballot, and more importantly, have that ballot counted.

Is this the end of the internet as we know it?

On January 14, the Federal Appeals Court for the District of Columbia struck down a Communications Commission rule that guaranteed what is called “net neutrality.” The rule prohibited internet providers from blocking internet traffic to consumers based on content or bandwidth or charging consumers a greater fee to access content. The split decision by the court in favor of Verizon and MetroPCS had additional support in the form of briefs from right­wing lobbying groups and the conservative former Attorney General of Virginia, Ken Cuccinelli. Cuccinelli had filed friends of the court briefs to assist the appellants in their case. The court leaned heavily on a similar decision in 2010 in favor of ComCast, that prompted renewed rules prohibiting the blocking of internet traffic based on content.

Spirit of MLK Launches Worldwide Wave of Action

Happy MLK Day!
The spirit and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King is a driving force behind the upcoming Worldwide Wave of Action. Here's an Anonymous call to action video featuring MLK. Please consider sharing it today...

Spirit of MLK Launches Worldwide Wave of Action

Video transcript:

Martin Luther King, Jr.: "We have come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism…. It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges…. I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom…"

On the anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, April 4, 2014, the spirit of MLK will rise again. We will engage a worldwide wave of action, "from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city. From every mountain side…"

We will "let freedom ring."

For Whom the Bell Tolls

Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. ... A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies. – “A Time to Break Silence (Beyond Vietnam)” Dr. Martin Luther King, April 4, 1967.

This month, from Atlanta, GA, the King Center announced its "Choose Nonviolence" campaign, a call on people to incorporate the symbolism of bell-ringing into their Martin Luther King Holiday observance, as a means of showing their commitment to Dr. King's value of nonviolence in resolving terrible issues of inequality, discrimination and poverty here at home. The call was heard in Kabul, Afghanistan.

David Bird, Wall Street Journal Reporter, Goes Missing After Reporting for Three Months on Oil Glut in U.S.

David Bird, a reporter who covers energy markets for the Wall Street Journal, has been missing for nine days. Bird, who has worked for the parent of the Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones, for more than 20 years, left his Long Hill, New Jersey home on the afternoon of Saturday, January 11, telling his wife he was going for a walk. Despite a continuous search by hundreds of volunteers and law enforcement officials, Bird has not been located.

Bird is 55 years old, approximately 6’1, and was last seen wearing a red jacket with yellow zippers according to officials. He and his wife, Nancy, have two children, ages 12 and 15. Anyone with information is asked to contact the Long Hill Police at (908) 647-1800.

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Bird is a liver-transplant recipient and is required to take medication twice a day. He did not take his medication with him when he left for the walk.

West Virginia

Paying “Friends” to “Like” America: Our government'social media scheme to fake popularity

Pundits often speculate on the price of American foreign policy. They often wonder what the cost of maintaining the nation's good image abroad might be. Thanks to a recent AP report, there may now be the beginnings of a metric to measure that. On January 5, the AP ran a story about the fraudulent commercial underbelly of the social media industry. Among other things, it detailed information-age sweatshops in Bangladesh – where you can bulk purchase social media clout for half a penny per click. Buried in the article was a snippet about the US State Department discontinuing the practice of paying for Facebook “Likes” after an internal report revealed it had spent $630,000 buying non-existent “Likes” and “Friends.”

Bereft of Democracy

“(Chris) Christie is the caricature of a Third World despot,” writes Chris Hedges of the reeling New Jersey governor. “He has a vicious temper, a propensity to bully and belittle those weaker than himself, an insatiable thirst for revenge against real or perceived enemies, and little respect for the law and, as recent events have made clear, for the truth.”

And he still might wind up becoming our next president.

This is our kind of guy — media spectacle, bully, errand boy for the moneyed interests. His presidential aspirations may not survive “bridge-gate,” but in his national prominence he sure defines the abject state of American democracy. We give power to would-be despots, “caricatures” only in the sense that they lack life-and-death control over their subjects and are forced to express their wrath through lane closures and the infliction of mere inconvenience on their political foes.

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