Senator Susan Collins too busy to stay and listen
Doug has been a consistent media presence in January, year after year, around here to deliver the full measure of the history and teachings of Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King. This year was no different, as is pretty well reported here by the Bangor Daily News:
Celebration of Martin Luther King's life includes plans for $1 million fund, memorial garden
By Aimee Dolloff - Tuesday, January 22, 2008
University of Maine officials also unveiled pictures of a conceptual design for a Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King memorial garden that will be located on the Orono campus behind Memorial Union near the Advanced Manufacturing Center.
Both announcements were made during the 12th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast at UM. The event was co-hosted by the Greater Bangor Area National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the university....
The celebration of the life and teachings of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. should not be marked as just another holiday as often is the case, according to University of Maine professor Doug Allen, the keynote speaker of Monday’s breakfast.
"Every year we have all over the United States wonderful celebrations for King’s birthday. To me, there’s something that isn’t right about them," he said.
Allen, a peace activist, pointed out that powerful and wealthy people around the country praise King on his birthday, saying that, "He was a great man and we should follow his model."
But if he were alive, that’s not what powerful and wealthy people would say about the man who motivated others to take unpopular action in a difficult time.
"He’s a troublemaker," Allen said. "That’s what many of these same people would be saying.
"I think every year what we often get around the country is like a Hallmark greeting card," Allen said. "Hatred is awful. War is awful. Love is good. Racism is evil. Have a nice day."
"We need to celebrate King, but we only honor King if we use the day to raise our consciousness so that we can then understand and apply King’s teachings and methods," Allen said.
Throughout his remarks, Allen brought up current events and their relevance to King’s dream — the war in Iraq, the economic disparity between classes, and challenges that face the United States and its people every day.
"King, his example, his teachings, his methods, I believe are more relevant and more desperately needed today than ever," Allen said.The BDN article, however, does not mention that Senator Collins left the breakfast prior to Doug's remarks.
Here is a highly recommended Daily Kos diary that reinforces with lots of detail everything Doug spoke about:
The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. You Don't See on TV
by TomP - Sun Jan 20, 2008
Last week, I brought you the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: Letter from the Birmingham Jail on Dr. King's actual birthday. Now I want to talk about the Dr. King you likely won't see tomorrow on TV.
But after passage of civil rights acts in 1964 and 1965, King began challenging the nation's fundamental priorities. He maintained that civil rights laws were empty without "human rights" — including economic rights. For people too poor to eat at a restaurant or afford a decent home, King said, anti-discrimination laws were hollow.
Noting that a majority of Americans below the poverty line were white, King developed a class perspective. He decried the huge income gaps between rich and poor, and called for "radical changes in the structure of our society" to redistribute wealth and power.
Posted by The Owl at 22:02. Filed under: Rights and justice
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