Obligatory MLK-day Message from the Left

I wrote at least two pieces for newspapers on this topic (MLK has long since been appropriated, gentrified and his legacy stripped of its radical import, etc) while I was in college. Here are some of the recent additions (and older ones as well) that are worth reading:

• "The Martin Luther King they won't celebrate" - Brian Jones @ socialistworker.org
• "The Martin Luther King you don't see on TV" - Jeff Cohen @ FAIR
• "MLK: Christian core, Socialist Bedrock" - @ Solidarity
• "Unfinished Business: MLK in Memphis" - @ International Socialism (ISJ.org)
  

If you're in the mood for a chuckle, read the Heritage Foundation's MLK-day propaganda leaflet which pins MLK's "message" as "fundamentally conservative". Seems to make a lot of sense to me that someone advocating the abolition of Jim Crow and the momentous 1964 Voting Rights Act (not to mention radical redistribution of resources, expansion of the Great Society and an end to the imperialist war in Vietnam) was a staunch advocate of maintaining the status quo. Of course, that the Heritage Foundation could even lay claim to MLK with a straight face already speaks to the tremendous progress made in domesticating, whitewashing and depoliticizing the meaning of his life's work.