Happy MLK Day

Submitted by MGoGrendel on

Happy Martin Luther King, Jr Day.

What a great message - wish we had more peaceful protestors today. Our company honors today with a company holiday and the kids are home from school.

Heading to Midtown Atlanta for lunch at my buddy's restaurant. What's your day look like?

wolverinebutt

January 16th, 2017 at 8:09 AM ^

Yes, happy MLK day. His message of non violence was great. 

I'm off today, the Wifey is working.  I am taking my 25 pound  killer Dachshund mix to the Vet. I'm wearing a M football shirt.  Maybe my bill will be 3-9 dollars.    

LSAClassOf2000

January 16th, 2017 at 8:35 AM ^

We get today off, so I am still sort of basking in the post-wakeup haze....as I woke up only about a half hour ago. It just rare for me to be able to get up at 8 AM on a Monday, so I am enjoying that little bit of the day first, also being in no hurry to eat breakfast. I'll probably go for a nice run later, and it won't be because I am running from a meeting. 

FauxMo

January 16th, 2017 at 10:44 AM ^

You sound pissed. Like there is just a steady stream of anger coming out of you. (FYI, these jokes are going to be golden for the next 4 years. I expect to shower people with them whenever possible. And I can do it, because I'm a whizz at this sort of thing...) 

901 P

January 16th, 2017 at 8:41 AM ^

Incredible figure. If you haven't already, I would recommend that everyone read some of MLK's writings/addressesbeyond his "I Have a Dream" speech during the March on Washington. "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" is great. I'd also recommend his writings that show the breadth of his thinking and his emphasis that racial equality and other forms of human rights were related. One example is his April 1967 speech condeming the Vietnam War; another is "Testament of Hope," which I believed was published after he died in 1968. 

Dilla Dude

January 16th, 2017 at 8:57 AM ^

Part of what made MLK so great was that, contrary to popular belief, he was a pretty radical dude.



He was arrested over 30 times while protesting believing, "One has a moral responsiblility to disobey unjust laws."



He called on U.S. leaders to scale down militarism, to form a multiracial working class coalition and to combat poverty. 



"Everyone is worrying about the long hot summer with its threat of riots. We had a long cold winter when little was done about the conditions that create riots," King said in June 1967.



King was a Democratic Socialist who preached about resistance and strength as much as he preached about love. But many of these qulities have been sanitized out of history.



Link: http://mashable.com/2016/01/18/martin-luther-king-jr-quotes/#X8h3zQJ5KSqj



 



 

901 P

January 16th, 2017 at 9:16 AM ^

Yep--the public memory of King tends to emphasize him as a moderate figure. He really wasn't--he demanded an end to segregation, which is now uncontroversial and accepted by a large majority of Americans. But he also insisted that the government had an obligation to end other forms of inequality, including economic inequality. And he called the United States government "clearly . . . the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today." Those views are less popular and tend to be ignored. 

I have mixed feelings about our "sanitized" view of King--I really wish more people would be aware of his more "radical" views, but I also recognize that such knowledge could make him a less popular figure.

jmdblue

January 16th, 2017 at 12:34 PM ^

of an unregulated capitalist / libertarian economic system (massive wealth disparity, environmental catastrophe, tragic working conditions and huge economic swings), with the worst of a Soviet style govenmental system (lack of freedom of speech, protest, religion, press etc).  

The current systems will eventually correct themselves.  When they do I hope it looks more like 1989 Berlin than 2016 Venezuela plus nukes.

sadeto

January 16th, 2017 at 12:52 PM ^

The geriatric kleptocracy in Beijing is betting that the assumption of an eventual "correction" is incorrect and just another product of the relationship between capital and the state in bourgeois society. And at this point, almost 30 years after Tiananmen, who's to say they are wrong? I spend a bit of time in China every year, and I bet most Chinese would say they would rather have a butler than the right to vote for someone not chosen by the party. 

jmdblue

January 16th, 2017 at 2:10 PM ^

both the thoughts of the Chinese leadership and the tradeoffs the butler-hiring Chinese citizenry is willing to make, I wonder how the Chinese butlers feel about the arrangement. I don't know what the actual rate of Chinese growth is, but whatever it is it doesn't seem sustainable.  Without that growth the economic opportunities available to its poor citizens dies and, I think, their willingness to live in an authoritarian system dies with it.  

We shall see.

SalvatoreQuattro

January 16th, 2017 at 9:18 AM ^

That is not what made him great.

Radicalism has brought countless horrors to the world from Robespierre to Lenin to Mao to Castro.Radicalism is an evil.

What made King great was his ability to reach white peoples in a way no other black leader ever had. He understood that for blacks to achieve equality or at least start the journey to it he needed the majority's assistance.

Democratic Socialism is not an ideology I think much of. I'll leave it at that.




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