shall we perish unjust, or live equal as a nation

"True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring." – Martin Luther King

It’s Martin Luther King Day, and as I’ve been checking the various tributes to and commemorations of the man and his legacy, I’ve noticed there is a tendency to gloss over or ignore the more radical elements of King’s message.

The March on Washington and the “I Have a Dream” speech were very important events which have unfortunately been transformed into idiomatic Riddley Walker-esque elements of America’s national mythology. The context has been forgotten or oversimplified into victories over symptoms of a diseased social environment (“Buses and lunch counters are no longer segregated! The battle is won!”) without mentioning that the underlying illness has never been cured.

Prior to his assassination in 1968, King had turned his attention on what he saw as the root causes of inequality. He saw parallels between America’s short-sighted, self-interested foreign policies and the lopsided way wealth was distributed domestically. As long as the system was set up to benefit a few at the expense of the many, there could be no real equality, either inside America or abroad. In speeches like “Beyond Vietnam,” King argued for the nation’s actions to live up to the ideals its leaders claimed to profess.

For his efforts, King found himself accused of being a communist dupe and insurrectionist by the mainstream media. It’s one thing to attack a backwards and ugly regional legal system; it’s another to turn one’s sights on the status quo of the self-congratulatory, “enlightened” establishment. Egalitarian aspirations are fine and all, but any talk of the “s” word (socialism), no matter how mild, is verboten. It reeks of “class war,” don’t you know. Besides, the doorman at my Central Park West apartment building is a Negro, and he gets paid a very fair wage….or he did, until he was fired for passing out union literature.

So on this day let us think of Dr. King, the goodness he helped this nation accomplish, and the greatness we should never quit striving towards.

The Impressions – This Is Our Country (from This Is Our Country, 1968) – Here Curtis Mayfield sings some smooth, sweet soul that carries as much righteous power as the most ferocious Crass composition.

The Rascals – People Got to Be Free (from The Very Best of the Rascals, 1993) – Progress, as illustrated by Billboard’s year-end Top 100:

#5 in 1968 – The Rascals – “People Got To Be Free”
#5 in 2006 – Shakira featuring Wyclef Jean – “Hips Don’t Lie”