Columnist Jamala Rogers
For years now, I have been sweetly singing the same reframe – sometimes it became a rant – that those of us who really understood Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream were falling down on the job.
We had let our guard down. We had ceased to be vigilant not only in protecting the dream but in carrying out the dream that has now become an extraordinary legacy. Worse, we are bestowing honors in the name of Dr. King on those destroyers of the dream.
Many in the social justice movement feel the same way. There were times over the past several years that efforts were made to disrupt the pretentious pomp and circumstances of King Holiday activities. We knew he would be sickened by the lack of substance that pervades the hard-fought day that is supposed to be about sacrifice and struggle.
Reclaim the Dream will roll out this year. It is supported by those who are deeply involved in the kind of people’s work that Dr. King made his life’s work. A website has been set up at www.reclaimthedream.org and reminds us that the dream has been hijacked. His “message of economic and social justice has been whitewashed and watered down to diversity and non-violence.”
Organizers of Reclaim the Dream are asking people who share their concerns join them in two activities planned for January 21. The first is at Kiener Plaza across from the Old Courthouse at 9:30 am to form the Dream contingent. There we will hear messages to authenticate the dream. Later at 7 p.m., there will be a discussion at Legacy Bookstore located at 5249 Delmar Blvd.
Look around St. Louis. Does it look like we’re working on Dr. King’s dream? What would Dr. King do (WWKD) about some of these social problems?
Regarding the attack on the public schools, Dr. King believed that “the function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically.” Our children are being robbed of a true education and ultimately, their future.
The growing economic gap between the rich and poor is becoming an acceptable fact. Dr. King would have found it unconscionable believing “the curse of poverty has no justification in our age” and that the “the time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty.”
On police brutality and the criminal courts, Dr. King said that “law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.” He would be critical of a police department that persists in racial profiling and a prosecuting attorney’s office which has difficulty figuring out what’s a crime.
On the illegal Iraqi war and U.S. imperialism, Dr. King was on point when he predicted that “a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.”
Dr. King reminded us that “of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.” He would be appalled to see that the richest country in the world had 45 million uninsured citizens.
Dr. King would be all over injustices like Chief Sherman George’s forced removal and the lack of substantive leadership at the top. He would be wondering why too many of us have been passive about his legacy. Sadly, he knew that “the ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.”
Let’s stand up. Reclaim the dream. “The time is always right to do what is right.”