MLK- Hero for All Time

What did Dr.King realize and determine we all must overcome?

Dr. King was an inspirational leader, feared by "the powers that be". He was murdered when he crossed the black/white line and began reaching poor white Americans and became an Anti-Vietnam War protester, as well. Dr. King is a hero for all people, for all times - especially today.

Just a year before his assassination, at a Southern Christian Leadership Conference staff retreat in May 1967, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said:

"I think it is necessary for us to realize that we have moved from the era of civil rights to the era of human rights…[W]hen we see that there must be a radical redistribution of economic and political power, then we see that for the last twelve years we have been in a reform movement…That after Selma and the Voting Rights Bill, we moved into a new era, which must be an era of revolution…In short, we have moved into an era where we are called upon to raise certain basic questions about the whole society."

https://poorpeoplescampaign.org/index.php/poor-peoples-campaign-1968/

Earlier on 4 Apr 1967, one year prior to his murder, Dr. King delivered his first public antiwar speech, “Beyond Vietnam,” at New York’s Riverside Church. (See link below.) Toward the conclusion he stated:

"This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: “Let us love one another (Yes), for love is God. (Yes) And every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love. . . . If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us.” Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day."

http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/documentsentry/doc_beyond_vietnam/

Dr. King delivered his famous"I have a Dream" speech to more than 250,000 people outside the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in Washington, 28 Aug 1963.

We Have Met the New Poor... They are US

When he was assassinated, nearly 50 years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was working on the Poor People's Campaign. He knew then that the only chance we had to make the American Dream come true was to help people - black, white, Hispanic, Native American, all of us - understand that we are all poor people, except the .001%.

“This sounds counter-intuitive, right? In this year of Trump, where supposedly the lines of division are stronger, Dr. King’s diagnosis and his way forward with the Poor People’s Campaign makes more sense now even than when he proposed it 50 years ago. We need to be able to show these things, about what’s happening in Flint, what’s happening in Decatur, about how poverty is visiting more and more people and impacting them, and the role that racism plays in not only oppressing and exploiting Black people and other poor people of color, but also controlling the poor whites on the bottom.”

You thought you were middle class, right? We all did.

The truth is you and I are now the newest members of the Poor. We’re just the New Poor.

There is no longer a "middle" for any of us… only bottom… and the very, tip top for the .001%.

Sleeping Through YOUR Revolution

"I am sure that most of you have read that arresting little story from the pen of Washington Irving entitled "Rip Van Winkle." The one thing that we usually remember about the story is that Rip Van Winkle slept twenty years. But there is another point in that little story that is almost completely overlooked. It was the sign in the end, from which Rip went up in the mountain for his long sleep."

"When Rip Van Winkle went up into the mountain, the sign had a picture of King George the Third of England. When he came down twenty years later the sign had a picture of George Washington, the first president of the United States. When Rip Van Winkle looked up at the picture of George Washington—and looking at the picture he was amazed—he was completely lost. He knew not who he was."

"And this reveals to us that the most striking thing about the story of Rip Van Winkle is not merely that Rip slept twenty years, but that he slept through a revolution. While he was peacefully snoring up in the mountain a revolution was taking place that at points would change the course of history—and Rip knew nothing about it. He was asleep. Yes, he slept through a revolution. And one of the great liabilities of life is that all too many people find themselves living amid a great period of social change, and yet they fail to develop the new attitudes, the new mental responses, that the new situation demands. They end up sleeping through a revolution."

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution"

Delivered at the National Cathedral, Washington, D.C., on 31 March 1968. Congressional Record, 9 April 1968.

"For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way God’s universe is made; this is the way it is structured." Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Take part in YOUR Revolution.