{"id":32037,"date":"2018-04-04T13:06:18","date_gmt":"2018-04-04T20:06:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=32037"},"modified":"2018-04-04T13:06:18","modified_gmt":"2018-04-04T20:06:18","slug":"fifty-years-ago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2018\/04\/04\/fifty-years-ago\/","title":{"rendered":"Fifty Years Ago"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Fifty years ago today I had &quot;cleaned up for Gene&quot;, sort of, and was working on his campaign, while fighting to keep SDS nonviolent.&#160; Back then, the world was not connected the way it it now.&#160; I did not watch TV every day, so I did not learn until sometime the next day that my hero and friend had been murdered.&#160; Barack Obama joined John Lewis in a tribute to his legacy.<\/font><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"0404KingAs\" style=\"border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; float: none; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-left: auto; display: block; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; margin-right: auto\" border=\"0\" alt=\"0404KingAs\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/0404KingAs.jpg\" width=\"750\" height=\"375\" \/><\/p>\n<p>On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, and Wednesday marks the 50th anniversary of his death. In order to commemorate the occasion, Barack <a href=\"http:\/\/time.com\/5227068\/barack-obama-john-lewis-martin-luther-king\/\" target=\"_blank\">Obama discussed MLK&#8217;s legacy with John Lewis<\/a> and a group of high school students in a new video released by the Obama Foundation.<\/p>\n<p>At the beginning of the video, Lewis recalls where he was when he got the news that King had been shot \u2014 in Indianapolis, organizing a rally. Obama tells students from Washington, D.C.\u2019s Ron Brown College Preparatory High School that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thenation.com\/article\/president-obama-exits-with-an-embrace-of-john-lewis-and-the-idea-of-a-just-america\/\" target=\"_blank\">Lewis was one of the people<\/a> who made him want to become involved in public life.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;I thought that this would be a good opportunity to connect the people who inspired me with the next generation of young leaders who are going to be doing outstanding things themselves,&quot; Obama tells the students, whose all-male high school <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2017\/10\/18\/557212286\/at-ron-brown-college-preparatory-high-school-students-are-kings-not-kids\" target=\"_blank\">grew out of the Obama administration<\/a>&#8216;s My Brother&#8217;s Keeper initiative&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Inserted from &lt;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bustle.com\/p\/obama-released-a-mlk-50-video-with-john-lewis-its-such-a-moving-tribute-8688755\" target=\"_blank\">Bustle<\/a>&gt;<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Here&#8217;s that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=M3ZrBunSPsQ\" target=\"_blank\">video<\/a>.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/M3ZrBunSPsQ?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Civil Rights leaders remembered him in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=IDl84vusXos\" target=\"_blank\">CNN interview<\/a>.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/6jKtQAH7eLU?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">The previous summer I was walking down the hallway after a planning session for one of Dr. King&#8217;s Vietnam Summer demonstrations.&#160; Dr. King appeared next to me and told me how had he was that young people were dedicated to continue the work after he was gone.&#160; I felt surprised and asked, &quot;Gone?&quot;&#160; He said that he was stirring-up a hornets nest didn&#8217;t know how long he would be allowed to live.&#160; In the naivety of youth, I assumed he was kidding.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">He was right, of course.&#160; If he had stuck with civil rights, he might have died of old age.&#160; But when he also organized so effectively against the war, and for the poor, he was threatening billionaires&#8217; profit.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">It boggles my mind that this was fifty years ago.&#160; That confronts me with my own mortality.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I&#8217;ll hope you&#8217;ll invest 43 minute to listen to his last speech, in which he predicted his own death.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/IDl84vusXos?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/font><\/p>\n<h1 align=\"center\"><font style=\"font-weight: bold\" color=\"#0000ff\">RESIST THE REPUBLICAN REICH!!<\/font><\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fifty years ago today I had &quot;cleaned up for Gene&quot;, sort of, and was working on his campaign, while fighting to keep SDS nonviolent.&#160; Back then, the world was not connected the way it it now.&#160; I did not watch TV every day, so I did not learn until sometime the next day that my <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2018\/04\/04\/fifty-years-ago\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32037\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}