MLK day 2011

Martin Luther King day.  Most of us call it MLK day.  Most of us aren’t affected by his great work.  For us, this is a multiple day holiday from work or school, a day to sleep in or be lazy, to check out the mattress sale or pick up a video game that’s been marked down by 10%.

MLK day is more than this.  I found this explanation on punchbowl.com:

This day serves to honor and commemorate the life of Martin Luther King Jr. It is also one of three federal holidays in the U.S. that celebrates an individual person.

Though it is a well-received holiday today, it took over 15 years for the government to approve Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a federal holiday. Congressman John Conyers of Michigan first introduced legislation for a commemorative holiday in King's name just four days after he was assassinated in 1968.

As Congress debated over the bill, they received petitions containing over six million signatures of support. Public pressure for the holiday reached its peak during the civil rights marches in 1982 and Congress finally passed the holiday into legislation in 1983.

Today, Martin Luther King Jr. Day is a celebrated holiday across the nation. Take the day and reflect on King's life and accomplishments and acknowledge all that he did for the Civil Rights Movement in our nation.

I also found information that states that it’s always on the 3^rd Monday of January.  This tells me that it’s not just a holiday to “honor and commemorate” his life.  This was a thought out way to get a 3 day (or a 4 day if you’re in the military)

It wasn’t observed by all states until 2000.  Some states, mostly the ones that were last to observe it, have tacked on “civil rights day” to the end of the title of this holiday.  Utah called it “Human Rights Day” until 2000.  Some states have combined it into an “orgy” holiday, making more than one icon “share” the glory. 

Being as I’m one of the racial majority, civil rights haven’t ever really crossed my mind until the nonsense with the TSA and the Bill of Rights.  I appear Caucasian, I’d like to think I pass myself off as educated.  I can usually hold my own in conversations that don’t involve a game of cut-throat hearts with the family.  But this really has me thinking…  What would the esteemed Dr King think of our society’s state RIGHT NOW, with the glut of information making it easy to find the evil in men’s souls EVERY DAY?

Honestly, I think Dr King would be pissed.   

We the People are losing our rights by inches.  The rich get richer, kids aren’t getting the education that they need from their parents or  public schools.  Our society and government is DE-VOLVING.  We the People are content to let things go along to get along for the most part.  Our government has made us afraid of speaking up because to do so MIGHT result in the speaker  being labeled a dissenter or domestic extremist, and it’s easier to stay home and watch “Survivor” anyway 

Do you really think that if the GBLT community had it’s own Dr King they’d be content with the “separate but (not really, who are we kidding?) equal” that civil unions are granting them?  I don’t.  Do you think that if they had a Dr King that DADT would’ve taken so long to repeal?  I really don’t think it would’ve gone into effect in the first place.

If non-Christians and Atheists had a Dr King, do you think that the military would be allowed to terrorize it’s members that are deemed not Christian or “not Christian” enough the way that it does?  I don’t think it would be nearly the issue that it is now.  It’s bad enough that Mikey Weinstein and MRFF, a watchdog group, have had to become a thorn in the side of the military and media.  Soldiers aren’t going through their chain of command because the issue is swept under the rug like sexual harassment or rape, so civil cases get dismissed.

Two of literature’s great writers made prophecies years ago about our society.  We’re become more Huxley’s “Brave New World” than Orwell’s “1984.  I’ve read BNW.  A couple times.  When I did, it seemed silly and frivolous, a UK writer mocking the future...  All those privileged people only interested in pleasure, proud of the dissolution of the family, and determined to conform.  Now that I’m older with children of my own, it seems to me that We the People are living BNW RIGHT NOW.  As Americans we are more interested in “Teen Mom” and “American Idol” than the news unless it’s a scandal.  We don’t care about getting active unless a celebrity “glamorizes” it.  We’ve got so many choices and most of them are mentally, emotionally, or physically bad for us.

A 1984 society is coming on, though, kids.  We are getting closer and closer.  The government is slowly taking taking taking.  Taking our right to assemble, to be free from searches.  They are taking our right to decide what to feed our children and the right to do what we want to do with the food we grow on our own land.  They are changing the history books so that no one’s feelings are hurt, so everyone’s happy – when everyone’s happy, no one’s told the truth.  We’re told we’re not qualified to know what to feed our families, that despite the economy we’re the “greatest country on the planet”, that all countries should or do strive to be like us.  What has this gotten us?  Happy meals banned in some cities, a national debt that will be choking our grandchildren, and over a decade of war on a CONCEPT (wars on concepts NEVER end) that is ripping a minority group’s families apart at least a year at a time.

What does this have to do with MLK day?  Everyone is losing civil rights except those in power.  And we no longer have Dr King to protect us, to stand for us, to say “this must end”.  MLK day is and should be about standing up and saying “this must end”, asking yourself what you do when no one’s watching, and doing something about it instead of being content sitting on the couch surfing the ‘net.