Martin Luther King Commemoration Monday in Brookings

Given we have talk-radio-fueled psychos issuing ultimata to governors to quit or be "forcibly removed" and trailer-park soldier wannabes thinking it's God's will to kill cops and overthrow the government, maybe we should all take a moment to recall where such behavior can lead.

The Brookings Public Library hosts a commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King on Monday, April 5, from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. The event will include a presentation of Dr. King's April 4, 1967, "Beyond Vietnam" speech, along with a photo montage by local artist Phyllis Cole-Dai. A group discussion will follow. The program is sponsored by the Brookings Humans Rights Committee (yes, the city has one!).

That MLK speech has come to my attention often. Some key lines:

...We are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside . . . but one day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that a system that produces beggars needs to be repaved. We are called to be the Good Samaritan, but after you lift so many people out of the ditch you start to ask, maybe the whole road to Jericho needs to be repaved....

...A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

Martin Luther King's calls for social justice sprang from his Christianity. Those calls provoked rage from whites desperate to "take our country back!" from people who don't "deserve" America. The same rage that led to King's murder by a racist thug 22 years ago Sunday sounds uncomfortably familiar to today's politics.

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Read more: Bob Herbert discusses the relevance of Dr. King's 1967 speech to today's foreign policy in Afghanistan... a costly endeavor of our federal government about which Tea Bags are confusedly and confusingly silent.

Obama, Dems, America Make History Tonight

Tonight, August 28, 2008, a black man will accept the nomination of the Democratic Party to run for the Presidency of the United States.

Once again, in presidential politics, I didn't get my man. Anna didn't get her woman. And most of our conservative blogging colleagues aren't facing the GOP nominee they wanted.

But Georgia Congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis reminds me this morning on NPR that our partisan disappointments pale to insignificance before the historical import of this moment (listen to the audio for the full impact):

"When Barack Obama accepts the Democratic nomination to become the president of the United States of America and starts speaking, I think all of America and many parts of the world — the hopes, the longings, the aspirations and the dreams — will be hanging on every word he says," Lewis says.

"It's going to be incredible. You know, people died. Some people didn't make it to the March on Washington. They were beaten. They were tear-gassed. Some were shot and killed. And even after the March on Washington, where there had been so much hope, so much optimism, we had to deal with the bombing on a church in Birmingham, where four little girls were killed. But I've cried all my tears," he says.

Lewis says he feels blessed to have lived to see this day come around.

[Linda Wertheimer, "Lewis Sees New Racial Era with Obama's Success," NPR Morning Edition, 2008.08.28.]

As should we all. In a nation with a long history of slavery, segregation, and racism, a black man is running for President, and enough Americans are willing to look him in the eye, shake his hand, and listen to what he has to say that he stands even odds of winning.

Rep. Lewis was on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial with Martin Luther King on August 28, 1963, to hear King proclaim his dream for America. Lewis will be in Denver tonight, in sight of the mountaintop, to himself address the convention and then to hear Obama proclaim the continued pursuit of that dream.

Lewis was asked what he thought King would say about Obama's nomination. He said he couldn't say for sure, "but I have a feeling he would look down and say, ‘Hallelujah.’”

Hallelujah, indeed.

Lewis addresses the convention in the 5 o'clock hour Denver time (6 p.m. Central). Obama speaks in prime time, 9 Central, 8 Mountain. Tune in. See history.

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Update 10:15 CDT—It's LBJ's dream, too: read Robert Caro, "Johnson's Dream, Obama's Speech," New York Times, 2008.08.27.

Update 11:37 CDT—Can I get another Hallelujah? More on history, racism, fear, and hope from Lewis and other veterans of the 1963 march on Washington who are now delegates in Denver: read Michael Powell, "Witnesses to Dr. King's Dream See a New Hope," New York Times, 2008.08.27