Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial..

[one_voice]

Today will be the dedication of the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial. He was an activist for all civil rights, including the poor and working class.

I thought it would be a good idea to post your favorite MLK Jr. quote here, or if you're lucky enough to have marched with Dr. King maybe a memory.

I believe the dedication couldn't come at a better time given the "occupy" movement that is going on.

I will start...

“We have no alternative but to protest. For many years we have shown an amazing patience... But we come here tonight to be saved from that patience that makes us patient with anything less than freedom and justice.”

- Montgomery, Alabama, December 5, 1955

[Number23]

1. "Even semantics have conspired to make that which is black seem ugly and degrading."

"In Roget's Thesaurus there are 120 synonyms for blackness and at least 60 of them are offensive, as for example, blot, soot, grim, devil and foul. And there are some 134 synonyms for whiteness and all are favorable, expressed in such words as purity, cleanliness, chastity and innocence. A white lie is better than a black lie. The most degenerate member of a family is a "black sheep." Ossie Davis has suggested that maybe the English language should be reconstructed so that teachers will not be forced to teach the Negro child 60 ways to despise himself, and thereby perpetuate his false sense of inferiority, and the white child 134 ways to adore himself, and thereby perpetuate his false sense of superiority.

The tendency to ignore the Negro's contribution to American life and to strip him of his personhood, is as old as the earliest history hooks and as contemporary as the morning's newspaper. To upset this cultural homicide, the Negro must rise up with an affirmation of his own Olympian manhood. Any movement for the Negro's freedom that overlooks this necessity is only waiting to be buried. As long as the mind is enslaved, the body can never be free. Psychological freedom, a firm sense of self-esteem, is the most powerful weapon against the long night of physical slavery. No Lincolnian Emancipation Proclamation or Johnsonian Civil Rights Bill can totally bring this kind of freedom. The Negro will only be free when he reaches down to the inner depths of his own being and signs with the pen and ink of assertive manhood his own Emancipation Proclamation. And, with a spirit straining toward true self-esteem, the Negro must boldly throw off the manacles of self-abnegation and say to himself and to the world, "I am somebody. I am a person. I am a man with dignity and honor. I have a rich and noble history. How painful and exploited that history has been. Yes, I was a slave through my foreparents and I am not ashamed of that. I'm ashamed of the people who were so sinful to make me a slave." Yes, we must stand up and say, "I'm black and I'm beautiful," and this self-affirmation is the black man's need, made compelling by the white man's crimes against him."

Edit: Where do we go from here - Southern Christian Leadership Conference, August 1967

[fishwax]

2. +1

:wow: :applause:

[one_voice]

3. Excellent...

:toast: :yourock:

[one_voice]

4. Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community....

The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of
civilization, when men ate each other because they had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume the abundant
animal life around them. The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.

[HipChick]

5. I will be attending the dedication cermony tomorrow in DC

[one_voice]

6. Lucky you!....

If you can take pictures...and have fun!

[ellisonz]

7. Sermon at Temple Israel of Hollywood delivered 26 February 1965

Rabbi Max Nussbaum and Martin Luther King Jr.

And I say to you that I am absolutely convinced that maybe the world is in need for the formation of a new organization: "The International Association for the Advancement of Creative Maladjustment" -- men and women who will be as maladjusted as the prophet Amos who in the midst of the injustices of his day would cry out in words that echo across the centuries: “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream;” as maladjusted as Abraham Lincoln who had the vision to see that this nation could not survive half slave and half free; as maladjusted as Thomas Jefferson who in the midst of an age amazingly adjusted to slavery would etch across the pages of history words lifted to cosmic proportions: “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights and that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness;” as maladjusted as Jesus of Nazareth that said to the men and women of his day: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you.” And through such maladjustment we will be able to emerge from the bleak and desolate midnight of man’s inhumanity to man into the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom and justice.

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlktempleisraelhollywood.htm

[one_voice]

8. Kick.

[ellisonz]

9. Kick.

[coalition_unwilling]

10. Will a picture of a poster at yesterday's Occupy Los Angeles count?

[one_voice]

13. I like that...

I'm going to save it and post it on facebook. Thanks.

[Zax2me]

11. This dedication is WAY too low key for me.

How often do we dedicate a memorial of this magnitude in Washington?
Once a decade?
This should be a day where the nation stops.
Not a sidenote.
Not happy with this at all.

[butterfly77]

12. Kicked&Recommended...

LET FREEDOM RING!!!