A Day For Heros

Today we celebrate the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Most of us know of his bravery in the face of Jim Crow southern cops and dogs. The march on Selma proves his heroism beyond all quibbling and his ultimate sacrifice shames us all. The things he and the black freedom movement did for Black Americans was monumental. That alone would earn him a place as a great American hero.

In the long term, his insistence on taking a stand against poverty and the inequality it brings may be more important and more heroic. A mass movement directed against corporate greed might have ended Dr. Kings life even more quickly than bigotry did. We can only guess what gains the movement might have given us if Dr. King had survived, but we applaud his heroism in any case.

We know that the immediate past reason for white antipathy is fear and shame based: a result of the slavery economy of eighteenth and nineteenth century America. Now that slavery is outlawed, we might wish that white bigotry had been outlawed along with it. The reasons for our ongoing pink against brown problems is bedded in the ongoing economic wants of capitalism. The wish for high profits drives capitalists to keep wages down any way they can. One of the easy ways to do that is to ghettoize some, (the blacks and browns) for the profit of the few, (whites and especially capitalists).

Many of us have been led to believe than capitalism is better than socialism or any other collectivist economic model. Let's face it, the propaganda machinery, (Newspapers, TV, Cable and Internet, Textbooks), is all in capitalist hands. We probably won't find them pushing alternative economic systems with any vigor. You know where I stand just from the title of this Blog. I suggest that Dr. King was a hero brave enough to have his own doubts about American Capital. I'm also pretty sure that his Christian God speaking as Jesus of Nazareth would have those same doubts.

"True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring". That's my Hero Dr. Martin Luther King Jr..