The Triple Evils of Racism, Poverty, and Militarism

Today, you'll likely hear many excerpts from Martin Luther King, Jr.'s familiar "I have a dream" speech, in commemoration of his birthday. It was interesting to hear from another of his speeches, this morning on Democracy Now!, however. They spent the majority of today's show simply playing the speech, which he delivered April 4, 1967, a year (to the day) before his assassination.

Though I was familiar in a broad sense with the radicalism of the connections King made between economic injustice, racism, and war (and the need to fight these simultaneously), I'm not sure that I'd ever heard this in his own words, at least not in this extended form. Many of his comments in this speech, which denounced the Viet Nam war and U.S. foreign policy, have a great deal of resonance today, with the current situation in Iraq and U.S. foreign policy more generally. If, as was the case with me, these words of King's are less familiar to you, you might want to listen to today's show.

In addition to being played on the radio (locally: on kpfk in the mornings and on kcsb afternoons at 4 p.m.) and on cable access (also at 4 p.m., in Santa Barbara), you can watch or listen to a streaming version of it online, or download it as an MP3 file. (Incidentally, the MP3 files are hosted by the Internet Archive, discussed in yesterday's post.) The MP3 download is the main way that I access Democracy Now! these days-- it gives me something to listen to on the walk to and from the bus stop, etc. (a fact that may answer the question, why does Molly, perhaps the least musically oriented person she knows, have an iPod mini? The answer to the question, why did Molly suddenly start speaking about herself in the third person remains unanswered, however.) (This all reminds me that I've been meaning to blog something about Podcasting for ages now, but I'll leave that for another day.)

Democracy Now! | Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 1929-1968