Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

At some point today, I will hear Dr. King's moving words uttered in 1963 in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. The media will talk about about his contribution to the civil rights era and rightly so. That is the legacy of Dr. King that has been safely co-opted and enshrined as part of the national myth. What will be omitted of course is his advocacy for the poor and his strident anti-war speeches. Dr. King spoke so eloquently in the years before his death about the need for social justice in this country. He called for greater redistribution of wealth and more economic equality. He was appalled by the paucity of social spending in contrast to the seemingly endless budget for the military and war. He spoke out against the Vietnam War, our Latin American policy which favored the elite, and our foreign policy which supported cruel dictators. He called the United States "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today" and asked for change. We listened to him about civil rights, but we did listen to him about poverty and war?