No Speeches or Cliches- The Real Martin Luther King Jr.

From the Interior Department's Facebook

Yesterday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the United States, and a lot of other people wrote posts, posted Facebook memes, and professed their love for MLK on the day we celebrate his life. Many of those people were not actually supporters of MLK though, whether they know it today or not, and many would not be supportive of him today. Many millions of people actually live in states that celebrated "Robert E. Lee Day" as well (note, this is a southern thing), and many millions of others would oppose the positions that King took. Even as we have made Dr. King a symbolic titan in our nation, we still have a lot of hypocrisy in this nation when it comes to his legacy.

For a lot of Americans today, Dr. King is about high-idealed speeches. "I Have A Dream" is a part of our national vocabulary, as is his "Mountaintop" speech he gave hours before his death. Martin Luther King Jr. said a lot of inspirational things, he was an incredible orator, which is not shocking for someone who's profession was "Pastor." It's fine to remember that part of him, if that's what you want. It's also a hollow, "2-D" image of a man who was much more than a speaker of pretty words. In fact, to me, it cheapens him.

Martin Luther King Jr. was a community organizer. He was a rebel, an agitator, someone who disturbed the order of "how things are." I doubt Dr. King would embrace a nation of apathy today, a nation that often times is ignorant to what is happening about it. I guarantee you he would not embrace the Tea Party activism either, Donald Trump, or much about modern day conservatism. Let's be very honest about who this one-time Republican was.

On the night before he was killed in Memphis, Martin Luther King Jr. was speaking to a bunch of sanitation workers who wanted to organize in a union and fight for a better wage. Martin Luther King Jr. supported unions and a higher wage, and workers in general. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke out against the Vietnam War, and generally attacked the war machine in our nation that focused so much of our national treasure on killing enemies, and not enough on helping our own people. Martin Luther King Jr. was anti-war. Martin Luther King Jr. fought long and hard for voting rights, and he most certainly would not support efforts by the Roberts Court or the Republican Congress to roll back the enforcement mechanisms in the Voting Rights Act. Martin Luther King Jr. was actually quite political, despite our best efforts to whitewash his actions from our history.

MLK was a "collectivist" as well. He wrote in his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail":

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

He was even a collectivist when it came to Chicano unionization rights, something that would drive Trump supporters nuts. King also wasn't a big fan of walls, something that would leave them equally mad. While a lot of people like to claim King's legacy for their beliefs and causes, many of them stand in direct contrast to the lessons Dr. King gave us in life. Denying rights, closing borders, pushing for wars, and creating a segregated society were not values that Dr. King fought for, regardless of "how oppressed" people who support those positions feel.

Martin Luther King Jr. was a political activist, not just some guy who delivered nice speeches. While a lot of people wrote about his speeches yesterday, I wanted to wait until today, and talk about the actual causes that he fought for, every day of his life. Much like you shouldn't live the word of Christ on Christmas and Easter alone, you also shouldn't admire Dr. King on one state holiday in January. King fought for the "little guy" every day, not just some days. While we have a more complex view of King the person, it's important that we don't continue to accept a view of King the activist that doesn't portray him as the complex figure he was at the time. Sometimes it wasn't as pretty as his soaring rhetoric, but he ultimately was very successful at changing the discussion in his time on the passions that he fought so hard to change.