We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Sunday, January 19, 2014

Remembering the Officially Deleted Dr. King

Click here to access article by Paul Street from CounterPunch. 

To commemorate Martin Luther King day (Monday), I am posting this piece which provides us with a much needed history lesson about another American hero whose significance in our lives has been eviscerated by ruling class media. Indeed, King's activities and words were so significant that they had to assassinate him (read An Act of State by William Pepper).
“The black revolution,” King wrote in a posthumously published 1969 essay titled “A Testament of Hope”...“is much more than a struggle for the rights of Negroes. It is forcing America to face all its interrelated flaws – racism, poverty, militarism, and materialism. It is exposing evils that are rooted deeply in the whole structure of our society. It reveals systemic rather than superficial flaws and suggests that radical reconstruction society of society itself is the real issue to be faced.”