Amy Goodman: Make King's Dream Come True

[marmar]

from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:


Make King's dream come true

By AMY GOODMAN
GUEST COLUMNIST

The blood still stains the concrete balcony outside room 306 of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn., where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968. King was in Memphis supporting black sanitation workers striking for a union contract.

This past weekend, I came to Memphis for the National Conference on Media Reform but went directly from the airport to this sacred ground.

King is typically remembered for his pioneering civil-rights work and his commitment to non-violent social change, immortalized in his "I Have a Dream" speech at the 1963 March on Washington, D.C. Even as he stood with President Johnson as he signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965, King was moving on.

The central issues that drove King in his final years were war and the poor.

On April 4, 1967, exactly one year before he was gunned down, King gave his watershed "Beyond Vietnam" address at the Riverside Church in New York:

"A few years ago there was a shining moment. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor, both black and white, through the poverty program. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor."

He went on, "I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values."

The speech charted the course for King's final year. He broadened the scope of his work, opposing the war and promoting a new, broad-based Poor People's Campaign at home.

He also broadened his roster of enemies. .....(more)

The complete column is at: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/300307_amy19.html