50 years later, remembering King, and the battles that outlived him

Martin Luther King Jr. remains frozen in time for many Americans. Seared into our consciousness is the man who battled Southern segregation.

We see him standing before hundreds of thousands of followers in the nation’s capital in 1963, proclaiming his dream for racial harmony. We see him marching, arms locked with fellow protesters, through the battleground of Alabama in 1965.

But on the 50th anniversary of his death, it is worth noting how his message and his priorities had evolved by the time he was shot on that balcony at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis in 1968. Dr. King was confronting many challenges that remain with us today.

He was battling racism in the North then, not just in the South. He was pushing the government to address poverty, income inequality, structural racism and segregation in cities like Boston and Chicago. He was also calling for an end to a war that was draining the national treasury of funds needed to finance a progressive domestic agenda.

This may not be the Dr. King that many remember. Yet, his words resonate powerfully – and, perhaps, uncomfortably – today in a country that remains deeply divided on issues of race and class.

“All the issues that he raised toward the end of his life are as contemporary now as they were then,” said Taylor Branch, the Pulitzer-Prize winning historian who has written several books about Dr. King.

At: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/04/03/us/mlk-assassination-anniversary.html

Buenos Aires enacts restrictions on downtown automobile traffic

An ordinance enacted in Buenos Aires, Argentina, seeks to substantially limit automobile and other motor vehicle traffic over a 100-block area in the city's congested downtown.

The ordinance, effective Tuesday April 3, mandates that all private vehicles, including motorcycles, require a permit decal to circulate along any downtown street on weekdays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

An electronic monitoring system installed two years ago will help enforce the ordinance - as well as fines that start at $50 for the first infraction. Residents and the disabled will be granted said permit, which costs $75 a year, free of charge.

Only the four main avenues within the designated zone (Córdoba, Sáenz Peña, de Mayo, and Roca) will remain exempt.

While these restrictions are only partial, they are part of a package of measures passed by the City Legislature in 2016 to prioritize public transport and promote pedestrian circulation in the downtown area, home to many of the nation's governmental and corporate headquarters.

Other restrictions enacted since 2012 have already reduced the number of cars in the area's narrow streets - most dating from the 18th century - from 15,000 hourly in 2011, to around 2,100 currently. Of the 4,000 motorcycles in the area hourly, however, around 75% commit parking infractions - mainly couriers and delivery personnel.

Nearly a million pedestrians circulate through downtown Buenos Aires daily. The first such ordinance was applied in 1913 to the city's boutique-lined Florida Street promenade, which was made fully pedestrian in 1971.

At: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.infonews.com%2Fnota%2F314532%2Fdesde-este-martes-los-autos-particulares&edit-text=

Downtown Buenos Aires. Traffic restrictions has made the area more pedestrian friendly in recent years.

Efrain Rios Montt, Guatemalan Dictator Convicted of Genocide, Dies at 91

Source: New York Times

Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt, who as dictator of Guatemala in the 1980s ordered fierce tactics to suppress a guerrilla insurgency and was later convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity, died on Sunday in Guatemala City. He was 91.

In the panoply of commanders who turned much of Central America into a killing field in the 1980s, General Ríos Montt was one of the most murderous. He was convicted in 2013 of trying to exterminate the Ixil ethnic group, a Mayan Indian community whose villages were wiped out by his forces.

A Guatemalan judge found that the general had known about the systematic massacres, in the hillside hamlets of the El Quiché department, and had done nothing to stop them or the aerial bombardment of refugees who had fled to the mountains.

The conviction, seen as a landmark in human rights law, was overturned shortly afterward. At his death he was being retried in absentia.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/01/obituaries/efrain-rios-montt-guatemala-dead.html

Guatemalan dictator Efraín Ríos Montt and friend in 1982. The propaganda pamphlet held by Ríos Montt, which reads "this government is committed to change" was prepared by the Reagan White House for the occasion.