MLK jr.

I'm two days late, but here's something in memory of the late MLK jr. from Amy Goodman at Democracynow.org which describes how badly we still need revolutionaries -

King made an essential link between poverty at home and war-making abroad. The connection, sadly, is as relevant today as it was the last year of King’s life. A new report from the Institute for Policy Studies, “40 Years Later: The Unrealized American Dream,” lays out key elements of the inequality that African-Americans experience in the United States around education, employment and wealth accumulation.
On education, the IPS report states that African-American college graduation rates will not be on par with white graduation rates for another 80 years. The income gap between blacks and whites will not disappear for more than 500 years at current rates. More than one-third of African-Americans earn less than $20,000 annually, before taxes.
African-Americans are also far behind in the accumulation of wealth. Add to all this higher incarceration, less access to health insurance and shorter life expectancy. King’s Poor People’s Campaign went beyond race, as he reached out to poor whites in places like Appalachia. Today, one in five residents of West Virginia is on food stamps, as is one in 10 Ohioans, and, according Jim Weill, president of the Food Research and Action Center, one in three children in Oklahoma has been on food stamps at some point in the past year. It is clear that Dr. King’s goal of bringing people “to the promised land” is still far off.

Full transcript here