Tim's journal

I usually post a bunch of subversive MLK quotes on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, but tomorrow is the first day of school so I'll leave it at this: During his life, King was despised by at least a plurality of white Americans and hounded by the US government; the FBI tried to manipulate him into committing suicide.

King believed that racism in the US was inextricably tied to capitalism. He wrote that racism would never end unless capitalism and imperialism ended as well. Before he died, he was starting to organize people based on both race and class, without reducing racism to classism. Towards the end of his life, he was also developing a more nuanced perspective on violence; for him, nonviolence was a tactic, not a moral precept. And that's why white people killed him.

Or in the words of Boots Riley of The Coup: "MLK took half a pill, procrastinated / Once he took a whole pill, they assassinated him" (from "Ass-Breath Killers")

PS: while it predates a lot of King's most radical views, Letter from Birmingham Jail clearly shows the path for getting there, and today is a good day to re-read it.