Mlk Assasination

Too many of us would rather celebrate than follow Dr. King. We would rather build a monument or name a street or school after him than build the new nation and world he called for.

Dr. King worked for equal protection and equal opportunity. We, too, must adopt that agenda, but ours is an age of both social crisis and ecological peril.

What was once primarily a series of tactics stretching back from the evil days of the poll tax in the 1960s to "caging" and photo ID today, has become official Justice Department policy.

Addressing poverty should be one of our first priorities, not the last. And one of the first steps we should take is to end our generation's version of the Vietnam War, our occupation of Iraq.

I was Robert Kennedy's press secretary, and I had received maybe 10 calls from various media, reporting accusations from angry Catholic phone callers complaining the senator had "taken communion" in a Protestant church.

A new form of political murder has taken its place -- character assassination. Over the last two decades, the Right has learned how to destroy its enemies without leaving a body.

Bobby Kennedy's brief remarks the night of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination would be later described as a small masterpiece of American public rhetoric made all the more poignant by his own assassination just eight weeks later.

In 1967 and '68, mainstream media saw Rev. Martin Luther King a bit like they now see Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

The continuing battle over issues like the words of Rev. Jeremiah Wright suggests to me that our soundbite-focused media culture isn't well suited to the serious, complex debate we need to have on race in America.

When King was martyred, America lost its most effective prophet, and oppressed people, both at home and abroad, lost their most articulate spokesman.

So many activists and everyday people before me swallowed their fears and walked facefirst into the fire. 40 years later, I sit here reaping the benefits. I live a life of freedom, mobility and peace. The progress is so utterly palpable.