Today is the official annual celebration of the life and work of Rev. Martin Luther King. Or at least the sanitized version of it. What is regularly left out of the various public events and corporate news stories commemorating King's Legacy is his strong denunciation of militarism and U.S. imperialism. Instead King has been reduced to being the government sanctioned official symbol of the civil rights movement, a particularly ironic twist considering that there is plenty of evidence linking parts of the national security apparatus to Kings' assassination. Across the country today thousands of lectures about civil rights and the value of personal perseverance will be given, all of them having the word "dream" somehow incorporated into the title. What tends to be overlooked in all these speeches, events, marches and rallies is that King did much more than have a dream. He had a vision and a plan for social change and, most importantly, he was willing to put in the hard work and take the personal risk necessary to see that change happen. He also was able to recognize the nature of American Empire and relate how it linked to issues of racism and poverty. One of the finest examples of this is King's 1967 speech at Riverside Church in New York City (audio recording here). Replace "Vietnam" with "Iraq" and the speech reads almost the same, the parallels between then and now being eerily similar.

In Grand Rapids the removal of any real revolutionaly meaning to Martin Luther King's legacy is best exemplified by the fact that the afternoon MLK day youth parade is lead by the junior ROTC and a military recruiter. A small group of local activists flyered the students in the youth march today about the connections between race, war, and military recruiting. The students were very interested in the flyers although the activists recieved a number of dissapproving glances from the supervising teachers.