By SheelaR

Honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Everybody can be great…because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”

– Martin Luther King Jr.

Today, as we celebrating the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, let us do so with the understanding that there is still much work to be done. We must continue to honor Dr. King’s great legacy today, not by having the day off, but the day on. Dr. King spent his life working for justice, unity, peace and preserving rights for all people. We should remember those lessons, share them and see how we can move forward with that vision.

In the early 1960s, when King focused his challenge on legalized racial discrimination in the South. 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.

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. “True compassion,” King declared, “is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”

It is amazing and inspiring all the things Dr. King was able to accomplish in his shortened life-time, especially considering the turbulent times he lived in. He organized many peaceful marches and protests and was a dynamic speaker, as we all remember from the ‘I Have A Dream’ speech he made during the 1963 March on Washington. He used that speech to eloquently call for civil and economic rights, as well as racial harmony, for all Americans. Dr. King’s life and accomplishments are worth remembering and should inspire each one of us to rise above the injustices we see each day.

We can believe in the dream of what we can be, which is really nothing more than what we already are, if we have the courage to take a look at what really matters in this world. Love. Friendship. Peace. Let us stay strong and remember the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. Let us live the dream that is our present. Let us believe in all that love can be.

As 2020 gets underway, in this nation of immense wealth, we must no longer accept the perpetuation of a cruel poverty ridden society that places value on things and not people.