Wake Up

Most of the people I've run into know that Monday, January 16, is a holiday. No post. No banks. No work, for a lot of people. And when I nudge them "It's Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday" they say "oh, yeah. Right." and go on with their plans for the day. For shame. He had a dream. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We all have heard the soundbites. But what we are not doing is anything, damnit, anything at all to honor the man. We torture innocent people on foreign ground, and no one does anything. We slaughter mothers' sons for no damn good reason at all, and no one does anything. We shall overcome? No. We shall continue on being the monster that we were. From Alabama to Arabia, we'll continue on our merry way, wreaking most violent devastation and mayhem. My man Zack said it best. WAKE UP! (now go read those lyrics. Or better yet...here's the critical piece:

"He may be a real contender for this position should he abandon his supposed obediance to white liberal doctrine of non-violence...and embrace black nationalism Through counter-intelligence it should be possible to pinpoint potential trouble-makers...And neutralize them."

What have you done? You! Yes, you, reading this now. My friends and loved ones and those of you who've just stumbled upon this blog.... what have you done lately? Get off your ass and go do something meaningful for MLK's dream. Make today a day on, not a day off. He believed in civil rights. Go write your Representatives about stopping torture. And while you're at it, set yourself up for the 4-Minute Democracy, and then use it. He believed in nonviolence. Pick a war protest, and go participate. He believed in "the table of brotherhood." Go wrap your head around someone else's viewpoint. Need more ideas? Go here or here. And if you can't manage to do anything else, at least read the whole I Have A Dream speech. It's astonishing, once you've read it, how often you'll hear it misquoted, misrepresented, or used totally out of context. It's the least we can do to honor the speech the way he wrote it, not the way it's spun. We have no one of his stature in our dialog today. Those who would speak truth to power tend to get shot here in the Land of the (heh) Free. And through apathy and the daily grind, we have become a nation of the somnambulent. That must stop. Wake up!