Comments on A Quote for MLK Day

Baraka has always been really important to me, too, Josh, more the Jones writings, but really, the whole reolutionary package. But the NJ poet laureate business, and the “Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers / to stay home that day/ Why did Sharon stay away?” stuff was really hard to make peace with.

wait, people actually get this day off?

Josh,

I agree in the enormous contribution MLK Jr. made to America. In no sense of exageration, if Teddy Roosevelt could be on Mount Rushmore, MLK should be as well.

I will say too that Malcom X does not get his due. I do not know as much as you do about the civil rights movement, but I think he was a sort of stick to MLK's carrot (with some stick of his own). His assasination was from within the Nation of Islam, but no less tragic in terms of what could have been accomplished had he, or MLK Jr. for that matter, lived. Truly tragic.

In some ways I see their deaths, along with the two Kennedy deaths, as the staring point to the dark day America is in today with the war in Iraq.
God Bless America. (no irony intended)

SD,

I intended no disrespect for Malcolm X. I think both he and MLK were super heroes. I was just trying to address the superficial hipster analysis that demotes MLK in Malcolm's presence.

I do understand that mainstream America doesn't give Malcolm X his props.

what a wasted opportunity...the stranger's readers are young and could use some updating on the civil rights movement. and what do you do on MLK day? make some kind of cynical, obscure statement about a white hipster.

wow, you all are so cool aren't you?

Agree with #1. I thought Baraka's first two books of poetry were worth owning. But he's been pretty godawful ever since ...

LOL at Baraka the white hipster ...

This is to remind everyone (including myself bc I forgot until I heard it on NPR today) that the government was agaisnt MLK. They knew that people had made threats on his life when he was in Memphis, but they did not tell him and did not investigate. Also, Rosa Parks was not a random woman who "one day" decided not to give up her seat. She was a trained activist. She was chosen by the movement, it was staged. Activism takes planning. And whoever the government tries to kill today, may be celebrated tomorrow as a hero. Today, tomorrow and next week, let us remember that as much as the mainstream media* wants to portray MLK as a "nice" guy, he was hated in his time by the many people who did not want equality.

*Just to be clear, I am not including The Stranger in mainstream media.

I would love to hear Baraka's response to being called a "white hipster"...