#1
well was he
#2
Yes
#3
he was gettin there
#4
im not concerned about that now. i just want to do gods will
#5
[account deactivated]
#6
not quite anti-semitic enough for me tbh. although anyone assassinated by the US government was obviously onto something
#7
he was getting more radical as time went on so...
#8
How is "was he revolutionary enough?" the debate when standing up against white folks those days in word or deed got you killed? I guess he should have quoted Lenin or something
#9
he was a trot
#10

animedad posted:

How is "was he revolutionary enough?" the debate



is it

#11
"Capitalism finds herself like a losing football team in the last quarter trying all types of tactics to survive."
#12

daddyholes posted:

animedad posted:

How is "was he revolutionary enough?" the debate

is it


yeah, all the time

#13
devil's advocate. King spoke of communism as a judgment against capitalism in a way that at times implied, or at least left available, that Marxism and communism were indeed wrong and America's failing was to provide no better solution. King spoke regretfully about "the crushing of the nation's only noncommunist revolutionary political force, the United Buddhist Church" under Ky.

The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. They are saying, unconsciously, as we say in one of our freedom songs, "Ain't gonna let nobody turn me around!" It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has a revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. 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.

. . .

This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing, unconditional love for all men. This oft misunderstood and misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of mankind. And when I speak of love I'm not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality.


#14

animedad posted:

yeah, all the time



well no reason not to talk about it its just not the question the thread asked

#15
Socialist, not socialist, whatever. I'm just going to enjoy the state holiday of White Person Relaxation Day.
#16
Dr. Du Bois has left us but he has not died. The spirit of freedom is not buried in the grave of the valiant. He will be with us when we go to Washington in April to demand our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

We have to go to Washington because they have declared an armistice in the war on poverty while squandering billions to expand a senseless, cruel, unjust war in Vietnam. We will go there, we will demand to be heard, and we will stay until the administration responds. If this means forcible repression of our movement, we will confront it, for we have done this before. If this means scorn or ridicule, we will embrace it, for that is what America’s poor now receive. If it means jail, we accept it willingly, for the millions of poor already are imprisoned by exploitation and discrimination.

Dr. Du Bois would be in the front ranks of the peace movement today. He would readily see the parallel between American support of the corrupt and despised Thieu-Ky regime and Northern support to the Southern slave masters in 1876. The CIA scarcely exaggerates, indeed it is surprisingly honest, when it calculates for Congress that the war in Vietnam can persist for one hundred years. People deprived of their freedom do not give up—Negroes have been fighting more than a hundred years, and even if the date of full emancipation is uncertain, what is explicitly certain is that the struggle for it will endure.

In conclusion let me say that Dr. Du Bois’ greatest virtue was his committed empathy with all the oppressed and his divine dissatisfaction with all forms of injustice. Today we are still challenged to be dissatisfied. Let us be dissatisfied until every man can have food and material necessities for his body, culture and education for his mind, freedom and until rat-infested, vermin-filled slums will be a thing of a dark past and every family will have a decent, sanitary house in which to live. Let us be dissatisfied until the empty stomachs of Mississippi are filled and the idle industries of Appalachia are revitalized. Let us be dissatisfied until brotherhood is no longer a meaningless word at the end of a prayer but the first order of business on every legislative agenda. Let us be dissatisfied until our brother of the Third World- Asia, Africa, and Latin America-will no longer be the victim of imperialist exploitation, but will be lifted from the long night of poverty, illiteracy, and disease. Let us be dissatisfied until this pending cosmic elegy will be transformed into a creative psalm of peace and “justice will roll down like waters from a mighty stream.”
#17
a lot of people are using today to contrast and compare MLK and malcolm x. i think it's better to focus on what united them: a fearless opposition to the evils of racism and atheism.
#18
its funny hearing a bunch of white people who had the day off work talk about today being a "black holiday" while all the black people are at their Jobs
#19
Martin King—he hasn't used the "Dr." or "Luther" or "Jr." for decades now—is living proof that even legends can get tired of being legendary. Pacing his spartan office at MSNBC's studios at Rockefeller Center on a dreary Wednesday in mid-January, King is pecking a text message back to his daughter about dinner plans tonight. It is King's 85th birthday and his family and friends are holding a party at the forever popular Sylvia's in Harlem, but his first priority is his new 8 p.m. show on MSNBC.

Dream On! With Martin King is, in many ways, another current events gabfest on a cable news channel. The set is hardly different than it was when Chris Hayes suddenly vacated the 8 p.m. slot just weeks ago, when a still-simmering scandal over explicit Snapchat exchanges with a diplomat from India forced the network to give up on All In, Hayes' struggling show that led MSNBC's prime-time schedule for less than a year.

The major change, of course, is that Martin King is still the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., whether he calls himself that today or not. And what remains to be seen is whether King can turn that historic star power to ratings gold. King, after all, is more than twice the age of his predecessor, if not that much older than Chris Matthews, the Crossfire! host and King's longtime partner in anti-malarial campaigns in Africa. Whether King's obvious vitality will carry over to a young audience raised on Angry Birds and Twitter is what MSNBC management calls the "known unknown."

"Just Martin, just call me Martin," King says after finally getting his text message out through Rockefeller Center's notoriously thick walls. And before his visitor can offer any accolades, King is shaking his head and pointing at his phone.

"It's hard to imagine Steve Jobs signing off on these new swipe commands," King says of a fellow legend who is no longer with us. "I know they changed it months ago, but I'm old. Most people my age have given up and wait for their kids to set up the phones and download the games. I may be slower on the uptake, but I have not given up."

That goes without saying. In a career spanning seven decades, King has been a primary force in the remarkable and often painful transition from an America of legal racism to a nation that is both more equal in terms of skin color and dramatically less equal in economic terms.

As anyone who has seen Eddie Murphy's Oscar-winning portrayal of King in the 2007 biopic The Mountaintop already knows, King was a Baptist minister from the media backwater of Georgia who became a friend of presidents, a confidant of Bob Dylan, a best-selling author of both memoirs and public policy works, and the face and voice of the American civil rights movement.

What the movie leaves out is the stuff of right-wing blogs and AM talk radio. There were allegations of extramarital affairs, bad business deals including a dot-com era boondoggle that left the icon nearly bankrupt, and claims of mismanagement at the non-profit Southern Economic Justice Center he has run for more than three decades now. On the Internet, conspiracy theorists claim he "sold out" or "worked with the FBI," supposedly to elude the fate of his more radical contemporaries in the late 1960s.

Perhaps most hurtful to King, there was the Proposition 8 rift in California back in 2008, when surreptitiously recorded video of the civil rights leader making disparaging remarks about an African-American transgender performer were used in anti-gay marriage commercials run by a conservative group that has long been at odds with King's work toward reducing income inequality. King apologized and campaigned vigorously against Prop. 8, but the damage was done.

The scandal marred what should have been the crowning achievement of King's career, the election of Barack Obama as president. King was there for the inauguration, but surely heard the Washington whispers about Obama needing to keep "arm's length" from the American who did more than anyone alive to change this nation's deeply entrenched racist culture. That the new president seemed more willing to follow the agenda set by Fox News and Rush Limbaugh than honor civil rights history was an early disappointment for Obama's liberal supporters.

"A human being cannot avoid being debased in American society," King says when asked if he has seen Obama lately. "I will tell you what I see. I see a time when we aren't mired in this undignified and soul-crushing system that punishes the many for not being the few, but I can't say with any honesty that I see the way there. Sometimes I feel like Moses looking down on the Promised Land and knowing I can't go because I'm too old and too sinful."

After the broadcast, which King described in colorful terms as being an uneven performance with second-rate guests, it is time to go uptown for his birthday party. It is a relatively modest affair tonight, an elegant but much smaller-scale celebration than his 80th birthday, which was televised worldwide and featured celebrities including Outkast, Willie Nelson, Stevie Wonder, the now-deceased Nelson Mandela, all living presidents including Obama (but not including George H.W. Bush, for obvious reasons), and Sheryl Crow.

If America is still far from the color-blind and equally prosperous land of King's still famous "I Have a Dream" speech from so long ago, tonight at Sylvia's there is something of that dream in evidence. The crowd is well-heeled and multi-hued—and if celebrities and broadcasters are over-represented, the same could be said of any New York party important enough to take over such a storied restaurant for the night.

Bill Clinton is there to give a Clintonian toast that will dance around his contentious nomination of King for the Supreme Court in 1993, fought so hard by Republicans that it permanently soured King's Washington ambitions. The two remain close, and it is Clinton himself who greets King when the town car provided by MSNBC stops in front of the restaurant. Hillary is there, too, but keeps a lower profile more befitting a candidate. Conspicuously absent is the Rev. Al Sharpton, who took such offense at having his better-known rival get the 8 p.m. slot that he packed up and went to a weekend slot on Fox Business.

The well-wishers tonight include Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels, James Earl Jones (mum on reports of Star Wars voiceover work with new director J.J. Abrams), trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, Governor Andrew Cuomo, BET chief executive Debra L. Lee, New York Times columnist David Brooks, Serena Williams, the singer Lorde, MSNBC colleague Rachel Maddow, Bono, Oprah Winfrey, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, and Mayor de Blasio along with his activist wife Chirlane McCray.

Beyoncé and Jay Z were rumored to be arriving with no less than the Obamas themselves, but such a fantasy double-date would likely break the Internet, and in any case the rumor proves to be just that.

As King says goodbye to his media interloper who tagged along more-or-less uninvited to the Harlem landmark, the octogenarian spots an old friend and 30 Rock colleague joking with the bouncers who don't seem to recognize the Absurdly Late At Night With John Lennon star and former Beatle. King's historic voice bellows over the doormen who seem twice as tall as any of the greying guests.

"Come on in, John!" he calls out. "Why that's John Lennon, of course you get him right in here."

The one-time revolutionary rock star shares a warm embrace with the still hell-raising populist reverend, with Lennon doing his "Very good to see you, Reverend Doctor, just wanted to see you about some problems related to being nearly dead!" elderly Liverpudlian routine with King that has already been viewed more than 11 million times online—you are forgiven if this iteration of the iconic duo seems more familiar today than their 1972 March Against the Vietnam War in Central Park that finally ended America's imperial war in Southeast Asia after weeks of suburban rioting.

Lennon, potbellied and wearing his trademark white rockabilly quiff, still has his acidic wit: He chided King for having the party at a restaurant on Malcolm X Boulevard. The two civil rights leaders never reconciled, and while King is alive and relatively well today, it is Malcolm X who has the national holiday and hundreds of streets and schools named in his memory.

But that was a long time ago, and for now the two living legends slip into the crowd, "the Mop Top and the Mountaintop," as they're known in those impossible-to-avoid web videos loved by the baby boomers, back to a birthday party that seems about to lift off.
#20


keepin mlk day going till the early mornin
#21

#22
[account deactivated]
#23
it is also worth remembering that the existence of people like huey p newton and fred hampton made dr. king's message and program more palatable to white people via contrast with the more 'extremist' elements of the black liberation movement
#24
huey p newton works much the same way on this web forum. Interesting how history repeats it's self. The grand spiral - spira. This is my story.
#25
[account deactivated]
#26
whatever happened to besline
#27
huh what ever happened to Fred Hampton
#28
extralegal assassination