Happy MLK Day! But what's this?

[DehydratedPorkMan]

ATLANTA - The eldest daughter of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King evoked the civil rights movement while reminding those remembering her parents that America has not yet reached the promised land of peace and racial equality.

"We must keep reaching across the table and, in the tradition of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, feed each other," Yolanda King said Sunday at Ebenezer Baptist Church during a presentation that was part motivational speech, part drama.

King, 51, spoke a day before Monday's celebration of the civil rights leader's birthday, the first since the death last year of Coretta Scott King.

Yolanda King told The Associated Press the holiday provides an opportunity for everyone to live her father's dream, and that she has her mother's example to follow.

"I connected with her spirit so strongly," she said when asked how she is coping with her mother's loss. "I am in direct contact with her spirit, and that has given me so much peace and so much strength."

The stage and television actress performed a series of scenes that told stories including a girl's first ride on a desegregated bus and a college student's recollection of the 1963 desegregation of Birmingham, Ala.

After the performance — attended by members of the extended family and Yolanda's sister, the Rev. Bernice King — Yolanda King and her aunt, Christine King Farris, signed copies of their books, and Bernice King posed for photographs with attendees.

On Monday, Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King preached from 1960 to 1968, was to be the venue for more remembrances and speeches. The keynote speaker was to be Dr. Otis Moss Sr., pastor of Olivet Institutional Baptist Church.

In New York, rallies, speeches and volunteer efforts were to mark the King holiday, some invoking the Iraq War, the conflict in Sudan and local tensions surrounding the fatal police shooting of a black groom.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the Rev. Al Sharpton and Gov. Eliot Spitzer were expected to attend a forum, joining Nicole Paultre-Bell, whose fiancee was killed by police in a barrage of 50 bullets in November.

The Rev. Herbert Daughtry, the national minister of the House of the Lord Churches, said he would lead an act of civil disobedience outside the Sudan Mission in New York.

New Yorkers also planned to volunteer on the holiday in a spirit of service, such as knitting blankets for babies born to mothers with
HIV/AIDS, painting murals, building homes, revitalizing their community and making fleece scarves for the homeless.

This year's holiday comes on the day King would have turned 78. King was assassinated while standing on the balcony of a hotel in Memphis, Tenn., on April 4, 1968. His confessed killer, James Earl Ray, was arrested two months later in London.

Coretta Scott King died last year on Jan. 31 at age 78. An activist in her own right, she also fought to shape and preserve her husband's legacy after his death.

Shortly after his death, she founded what would become the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change. For years, she worked to establish Jan. 15 as a federal holiday, which became a reality in 1986.

"When you see the commitment my parents exhibited ... it was not for fame or fortune," Yolanda King said. "The best sermons are those that are lived."

Aroo? I can understand the racism rallies, but are the war rallies really necessary? Just because King was a man of peace does not mean you have to go out and have another anti-war rally. Besides the fact that the war's not going anywhere, you're soiling his memory. This is a day of remembrance and peace, not a day or harrassing pro-war people in front of the White House. It's like when I went to a pro-choice rally 3 years ago and there were signs that said "End racism," and "War no more."

[Grislygus]

He's the closest America's ever gotten to a saint, so it helps to portray him as being on your side, I guess.

[KevinTheOmnivore]

Far lefties invoke the name of MLK, Jr. all of the time, for just about every pet cause imaginable.

This quote is big with the ANSWER crowd:

"I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today - my own government."

The irony of a bullshit Communist front group invoking the name of devout Christian is probably lost on the Food Not Bombs crowd.

[DehydratedPorkMan]

Originally Posted by Grislygus

He's the closest America's ever gotten to a saint, so it helps to portray him as being on your side, I guess.

I'll wait to hear W's eulogy today.

[KevinTheOmnivore]

And that's a good point by Grisly.

[derrida]

Originally Posted by KevinTheOmnivore

Far lefties invoke the name of MLK, Jr. all of the time, for just about every pet cause imaginable.

This quote is big with the ANSWER crowd:

"I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today - my own government."

The irony of a bullshit Communist front group invoking the name of devout Christian is probably lost on the Food Not Bombs crowd.

You need a reality check. King not only had communists in his inner circle, but he frequently addressed communist front groups like the National Lawyers Guild.

[KevinTheOmnivore]

So was every other Liberal organization at the time. The political spectrum was very different then, and Communism was still supported by many.


This doesn't change the fact that King was a Christian, a peddler of the opiate, no? bayard Rustin was also openly gay. Do you think that means King must've really liked homosexuality, too?

here are King's thoughts on Communism:

Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both.

It is a sad fact that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to ad just to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has the revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism.

King saw Communism at best as an over extention of some good ideas, but clearly never embraced it in his own philosophy, nor his speeches. Do you think the founders of ANSWER--apologists for N. Korea's regime--would mesh with King's thoughts above?

No, but they will gladly take him out of context in order to promote their own agenda.

And hey, thanks for the "reality check."

[Geggy]

King spoke out against the war in 'nam so it's only reasonable to speak out against the war today in his honor.

[KevinTheOmnivore]

King was non-violent. In that sense, you are right.

[derrida]

All I'm saying is that King could have done more to distance himself from people who defended Mao Tse Tung, and, in failing to do so, brought some amount of taint upon his legacy.

I'm not sure why you're bringing up King's Christianity (if you know about he personal life, he probably wasn't fit to be a minister) as if it precludes any association with communism. No, King wasn't a peddler of the "opiate." I'm sorry but I don't want to believe that a Marx quote you read somewhere is your sole justfication for assuming that Christianity is at odds with communism, especially when Jesus said essentially the same thing (in reference to the Pharisees, in case you forgot). You're welcome to argue that Marx was talking about faith itself, though.

"Die Religion ... ist das Opium des Volkes"

[FartinMowler]

I don't see blacks thanking Canada for us helping them escape from Slavery :/ why don't they have a day for that?



Heaven or Promised land = Canada

[KevinTheOmnivore]

Originally Posted by derrida

I'm not sure why you're bringing up King's Christianity (if you know about he personal life, he probably wasn't fit to be a minister)

King's speeches, non-violent philosophy, and his politics were shaped by his Christianity. I'm glad you see fit to judge how holy he was, but this doesn't change the fact that he WAS a self-proclaimed Christian, he DID believe in God, and these things DON'Tmesh with Communism either in rhetoric or in practice.

I'm sorry but I don't want to believe that a Marx quote you read somewhere is your sole justfication for assuming that Christianity is at odds with communism,

Uh, so one of the founders of the movement says it, and you don't think it matters? Here's a full version of the quote:

"Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions."

How about modern Communism in practice? Was Christianity a welcome thing in Mao's China? How did the Khmer Rouge treat Christians, Jews, and Muslims?

In north korea-- the dictatorship adored bythe ANSWER crowd, in case you forgot--Christianity is heavily regulated and suppressed by the state.

especially when Jesus said essentially the same thing (in reference to the Pharisees, in case you forgot).

No, Christ did not say the same thing. Never did Christ refer to belief in God as an "illusory happiness." The comparison is absurd.

You're welcome to argue that Marx was talking about faith itself, though.

You're welcome to show me how Christianity has been embraced by Communist regimes.

[DehydratedPorkMan]

Originally Posted by FartinMowler

I don't see blacks thanking Canada for us helping them escape from Slavery :/ why don't they have a day for that?



Heaven or Promised land = Canada

Didn't Canada just sit their slavery out?

[Courage the Cowardly Dog]

I'm all for anti-racism Rallies but keep your war rallies seperate (but equal)

and the black groom was driving drunk and attempted run over a police officer. And Al Sharpton's hair perpetuates a nasty stereotype.

Didn't Marx say Religion is the Opium of the people? Honestly have you know real proof of it ever succeeding outside of the Smurfs?

[FartinMowler]

Didn't Canada just sit their slavery out?

The Underground Railroad was a network of clandestine routes by which African slaves in the 19th century United States attempted to escape to free states, or as far north as Canada, with the aid of abolitionists. Other routes led to Mexico or overseas. At its height between 1810 and 1850, an estimated 30,000 to 100,000 people escaped enslavement via the Underground Railroad, though census figures only account for 6,000. The Underground Railroad has captured public imagination as a symbol of freedom, and it figures prominently in Black American history.

[Ant10708]

Martin Luther King Jr. had nothing to do with ending slavery.

[DehydratedPorkMan]

Originally Posted by Ant10708

Martin Luther King Jr. had nothing to do with ending slavery.

I don't really remember him doing anything either. Next.

There's still slavery down in Florida. My grandparents have friends that live in one of the mansions of Boca and they have immigrants living in their guest room in exchange for work and they transport them with a used U-Haul truck.

[Preechr]

THANK YOU.

Economic Slavery is the same thing.... possibly even worse than the kind with the beatings and the various privations.