Remembering Dr. King's legacy

Tom Loret | Twentynine Palms | Hi-Desert Star opinion page | Posted: Wednesday, January 25, 2012

All through grade school Dr. King’s towering moral voice came into our apartment over a black and white portable television but little did I know how extraordinary or serious were the events unfolding before my eyes.

The country was made to confront the political, racial and economic injustice that turned police dogs, fire hoses and truncheons onto citizens who marched through their own streets with signs that read: “I Am a Man.” This, in conjunction with data that found America to be suffering from a 15 percent poverty rate, threw the country into such shock that in 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson rose before the nation and somberly declared a full-blown war on poverty. 

To a young mind, the times also seemed like a mythic battle between two gods. There was the dignified, humane, non-violent god of Dr. King and the mean-spirited god of those who opposed change, demanded more austerity and who led us all in to the disasters of the Vietnam War. Dr. King’s message was enough for the FBI to call him the most dangerous man in America but to me and others my age, he exemplified true courage in the face of violent backward ignorance and taught us that real men do not hate or kill but are informed, have vision and care.  

Today the poverty rate is back up to 15 percent and once again subscribers to the other god have condemned us to the lies and violence of their wars at the expense of social justice. But through the years, his words still resound above the chatter of small-minded men and the enabling complicity of our vast, apathetic public: “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

Against all odds, I continue to remember and concur.