America's Martin and Martin's America
Recorded 01/11/08
Another great radio essay (put your politics aside and just listen to the wisdom) about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy and what his 'dream' was really all about. I mixed it with the instrumental to Big Dreamers by Reks from Statik Selektah's GREAT surprise album, 'Spell My Name Right (The Album).'
Enjoy:
[America's Martin and Martin's America (Hurricane 'Big Dreamers' Mix) by Mumia Abu-Jamal]
King was a pawn and that's exactly how he's being used today. He's a reminder of the failed attempt for equality in this nation. The system keeps propagating "I have dream" because the system knows that dreamers don't do anything but sleep. And we as Black people in this nation have been snoring.
ReplyDeleteI think it is a tad harsh to call him a pawn. At the end of his life he was a serious threat.
ReplyDeleteIn the latter (censored) part of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's life, he specifically argued that: “The evils of capitalism and militarism are as great as the evils of racism.” At the time of his assassination he was attempting “to bring the social change movements through from their early and now inadequate protest phase to a stage of massive, active, nonviolent resistance to the evils of…a system where some people live in superfluous, inordinate wealth while others live in abject, deadening poverty.” King was very openly questioning the effectiveness of past tactics for Black liberation. Shortly before his assassination, he declared: “For years I labored with the idea of reforming the existing institutions…, a little change here, a little change there. Now I feel quite differently. I think you’ve got to have a reconstruction of the whole society.”
What happened to him when he took this principled stand? The US president and the political establishment condemned him, and they were joined by The NAACP and Urban League "civil rights groups". Yet, these same folks today have twisted his message, and claim to have been his ally! What a disgrace!
Oh, yeah, and then he was assassinated! A multi-racial movement of the poor, to abolish capitalism was way too threatening to the US ruling class.