Politics/Government · Race/Gender

If he were alive today, what issues would Martin Luther King be working on?

Eric Ringham Jan 21, 2013
30

During his lifetime, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. pursued the struggle for civil rights via a number of different issues and causes. Today’s Question: If he were alive today, what issues would Martin Luther King be working on?

  • reggie

    I think Dr. King would be in the vanguard tackling the violence in our society. Working to reduce gun violence, domestic violence, and the insatiable militarism that has crept into our conduct of international affairs. He’d also probably be a beacon of reason shining a light on our growing economic disparities.

    He was the right leader for the issues of his time. It’s hard to find any similarly inspirational leader today.

  • James

    I hope he would be forcing us to deal with our inner city problems. Blacks may now have civil rights, but many don’t have jobs, fathers or much of a future. There is a lot of work left.

  • Jim G

    If the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had escaped his death by gun violence, the issues that he would be working on hopefully would be those of economic equality; wage disparity, workers’ rights, poverty, wage stagnation, and hardening class stratification. Of course, he would be working on gun violence and racism the two issues which we’ve inherited from our unresolved civil cold war.

  • georges

    If the Big Government had not been so inept as to allow the leftist liberal who murdered him to escape from prison, cross State borders, and the Mexican border, repeatedly, he would be full time working on the repeal of all Afirmative Action, all preferential treatment of African Americans, and other minorities, so that now, finally, people could be judged fairly and equally on the content of their character, instead of the color of their skin.

    • Steve the Cynic

      Talk about revisionist history! James Earl Ray died in prison of hepatitis. If you’re referring to the various conspiracy theories that someone else did it, all the ones I’m aware of allege that the conspirators were right wing zealots who thought King was a communist.

    • GregX

      your presumption is probably that had he lived ( an Bobby Kennedy as well), much of what took America another 40 years to accomplish would have been accelerated and he would have – today – could begin seeking the removal of protective and prescriptive equality laws – because now, with 50 years of stare decisis embedded in county, district, states, federal district and supreme court law … they would be unneeded.

      I think you are wrong. The conservative anti-equality backlash would have been vigorous and… in the face of a activist right-wing Supreme Court – it would take 200 years of stare decisis based on the now (still ) youthful laws for racial and sexual equality to be settled law and resistant to the efforts of the Robertses, Thomasians, Alitonians and Scalians.

      It is not the satisfaction of you alone that matters…
      but the satisfaction of the community of which you are a single member.

      • georges

        HarHarHar

        Nothing so unsettles a leftist lib……..

        ……..like the idea of true equality…….People being judged by their character, their abilities, their cranial capacities, their determination to succeed at good and legal endevors.

        It scares the hell out of them. They know that under a fair system, they, and those whose preferential treatment they champion, would come out on the low end of the curve everytime a judgement comes down.

        But then, the ones on the bottom are always the ones who don’t like the system…..naturally enough…..the ones who have real trouble measuring up in a truly egalitarian society. You can’t replace abilities and effort with hope to and maybe will and let’s pretend one is just as valuable as the other. Nothing worthwhile is achieved that way. Institutionalized preferential treatment is every bit the disaster for our country that slavery was.

        Don’t let equality frighten you so much. It will not hurt. Too harshly. HaHaHa
        Capitalism is bringing on real equality. No cheap favoritism, the spoils system of government, no, reality is finally settling in as Capitalism rises and the thieves of government fade into a greasy edging on the scrap heap of history.
        Enjoy…….

        • Sue de Nim

          There’s an example of how you belittle those you disagree with, georges. See it now?

          • georges

            Hi Sue……how ya doin’?

            No objective person could be offended by my post above.

            But then, the bank accounts of government employees might feel the heat.

            Are you a government employee, Sue? Or anyone in your family? Perhaps the truth hurts because the golden goose is being challenged…..and the golden eggs are looking a bit smaller to the gooser……to the delight of the goosee.

          • GregX

            Georges …
            Based on your lengthy resume here … You are either ….

            (A) serial unemployed due to poor people skills and at this time a stay-at-home lay-about supported by a working spouse or parents.

            Or….
            (B) The guy that is sucking up “free” company bandwidth and slowing down the productive employees where you work.

            Yes votes = A
            No votes = B

          • georges

            Let’s see how long Eric allows the above post by GregX to remain on this board.

            If he is at all an intelligent and dilligent moderator, he will pull such a childish and silly ad hominem attack.

            When one has lost the intellectual battle, one of weak mind resorts to the gregx level.

          • Sue de Nim

            Objective? You have an unrealistically high opinion of your intellectual skills. You have won no battles of wits that I’m aware of. The only thing you seem to excell at is insulting others.

          • georges

            Unfortunately, Sue, as a liberal you are not on a first name basis with objectivity. The liberal’s idea of how to be objective is to examine her feelings to see which one is at the fore today. And then go with that. Whereas real objectivity requires one to ignore their own feelings all together and assess what the facts say. Then go with that.

            There are very few of us in the entire world that can do it. It is harder than it sounds.

            As to intellectual skills, mine are second to none. The last battle of wits I lost was at age 8. You read my post about Grand Masters. Think about it for awhile.

            Like most people, Sue, you never take me on about the facts. I post facts, ideas based on facts, conclusions based on facts…….and if you were able to dispute what I say, I am sure you would. But you don’t. Because you cannot. It would be futile.

            I trust your day is going well?

          • Sue de Nim

            You’re objective? Tell me another one! People who are being objective do not call their dialog partners names (such as “lefty lib”) or make sneering interjections (such as “HarHarHar”) or presume sinister motives in the absence of evidence. As for facts, your supposed facts seem to get refuted quite frequently (like, MKL’s assassin was a “leftist liberal” who escaped custody), and many of the things you seem to consider facts are mere opinions. I and others dispute you all the time, based on facts, but you refuse to consider that you might be wrong. It’s easy not to “lose” an argument when you simply deny facts that don’t fit your opinion, like you tried to deny that you demean and belittle people the other day.

          • Steve the Cynic

            In my experience, it’s usually people with weak intellectual skills who feel the need to boast of them.

          • Steve the Cynic

            Take the log out of your own eye first, georges.

          • GregX

            Georges … I think the moderation process is … you get what you give. If you self regulate – you might see the moderator doing the same … but .. .when you choose to fling everything you can lay your mind on…

            I think the phrase in court is .. “permission to treat the witness as hostile”

            when I go low… I deserve what I get back. When my posts are pulled (and many have been!) .. I accept that. You seem to want some special treatment. Why??

          • Sue de Nim

            It’s presumptuous and offensive of you to ask how I’m doing, as you have no personal relationship with me, other than the way you have personally attacked me. (Just a hint, in case you want to learn something about people skills.)

        • GregX

          and nothing so confuses a conservative that all of their wins have occurred in a rigged game.
          conservatives like you are the Lance Armstrongs of the world. Like about the advantages you get/take and assume everyone else is doing it.
          Fantasy, fallacy and self denial in abundance.

  • John

    When Martin said “A time comes with silence is betrayal” (in reference to the war in Vietnam), I believe he would have helped to fight against the waring of the this country and the drone bombing of brown people on the other side of the world by our government.

    • John

      Sorry, “A time comes when silence is betryal”

    • John

      I’ll get it right, “A time comes when silence is betrayal”

  • GregX

    All of the same and everything you see in the news today.

    180+ plus years of culturally accepted, legally-enforced and corporately embedded behavior is not washed away in a few short decades.

    It takes 3 generations to change a culture, it takes 3 more generations for the change to become the new culture.

    Dr. King, had he achieved a life of 100 years, would say with his last breath… keep going.

  • Duke Powell

    Today Dr King would be thought of as an “Uncle Tom.”

  • kevins

    My four children were inspired by Dr. King, well after his death. I think he would be working on furthering the transcendent principles woven into his work, would remind listeners that individual liberty is both a right and responsibility, would detest the guns, but would also take some satisfaction in progress made. Hope it stays. BTW georgess, in a previous discussion, you wanted to see evidence of the haters. Suggest you check out NPR’s site, and the postcard to the president feature. Bye.

  • Grumpy

    Question for georges, jockamo, or whatever the hell your name is: Do you really believe the crap you post, or are you just trying to see how many people you can tick off for the fun of it? The kind of soulless extremism expressed in your angry rants is what led me to disassociate myself from the right wing and stop calling myself a conservative. My opinions are mostly the same as before, but folks like you give conservatism a bad name, so I’m in search of a new label.

  • paul

    Helping black people in the south. That was his specialty.

  • JasonB

    While acknowledging the gains African-Americans and minorities have made he would point out the gap between those that have prospered and others trapped by the persistent poverty that still exists.

  • leodial

    MLK would work on the social problems we have and the degradation of American morality. He knew that the anything goes attitude of the Dem. is a formula for anarchy and chaos.

  • leodial

    He would want to bring the country together not the divide and conquer strategy used by this President.