He Was A Man

  Fifty years since King's assassination, we are in the middle of fights for civil rights, the rule of law and, quite simply, common decency, that he would instantly recognize. The Republican party is dragging as much of the country, and the world, as far into the Pit as it can. And, holding all three branches of government, that is one helluva long way.
  We are fighting back on all fronts.
  And we will win.
  Eventually.
  We will win.
  Martin Luther King is probably more popular today, than at his death. He was derided for his stance against the war in Viet Nam by even the NAACP and others in the movement; and his Poor People's Campaign was thought to be a distraction from fighting racism. Even his belief in non-violence was scorned by some groups within the civil rights movement.
  In many ways, we're finally catching up to him. In others, though, his message, for many, is a watered-down version of what his work actually was.
  In the end, I think, King realized that poverty and militarism oppress all the poor and powerless, and that they have to be fought for all the people, in order to create the conditions to destroy racism and enshrine equality.
  King never had the chance to fully work out his evolving thoughts. It's entirely possible that he never would have. For what he was seeing, I think, in the years before he died, was that every aspect of our flawed existence touches every other, and that they must all be coaxed and prodded and forced into change.
  We are the inheritors and caretakers of civilization. Our responsibility as citizens lasts our lifetime, and follows us to our graves. Every generation must take up the responsibility and the battle. Every generation.
 I said that we would win, and we will. We will hold the line against the enemies of democracy and equality and we will drive them back. All of history proves the power of the human will to overcome. We shall.

 

The Importance of Words

  Amongst all the fear mongering from the ironically named right wing, and the impassioned response of the left; we have forgotten something (if we ever knew it.) We have conflated invulnerability with invincibility. There are two things we must remember: We are invincible. We are not invulnerable.
  The United States is still, by far, the most powerful nation on earth. No nation or group of nations could defeat us. Terrorists? Zero chance. But by forgetting the difference between those two words, we give the terrorists their opening. For while we are, absolutely, invincible; as a free society we are also vulnerable-- we can be hurt. If we fail to make the distinction between the two, or worse-- if we come to believe that the two are inextricably combined, then we run the risk of becoming a closed, paranoid state, like so many others in history. And just as those preying on our fears seem to want.
  We can survive attack. We survived September 11th. We survived the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City and the massacre in San Bernardino. And we will survive the next attack when it comes. Just as the French survived the Paris attacks, as the British survived the London bombings, as the Spanish survived their attacks; and as every other nation has survived. It is only by giving in to fear and stooping to their level that we will let the terrorists win.
  Benjamin Franklin said that those who would trade liberty for security deserve neither. I would like to remind the cowards and fear-mongers among us that the first duty of the government is not to protect us at any cost. The first duty of our government is to protect our freedom at any cost.
 

A Milestone

This is the sixtieth anniversary of Rosa Parks saying no to the injustice of inequality.
Let us remember that she was an activist who achieved great things.
Let us also remember that the fight is far from over.