Meeting Martin Luther King Again for the First Time

Editor’s note: Having just returned (Monday, Jan. 16, 2016) from participating in a demonstration and march in Oakland, Ca. today in honor of the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr, I was glad to receive this submission to Tikkun  (below) by African American studies professor (and Tikkun magazine author) Obery Hendricks. It is an important counter to the kind of rhetoric and tone I heard at today’s demonstration. At the rally before the march began  I heard one of the M.C.s ask the crowd to repeat “we will win by ANY MEANS NECESSARY” — a slogan I first heard from the Black Panther Party in 1968 — in clear attempt to repudiate King’s message both then and now about how to fight racism.

Paul Ryan’s Trickle-Down Budget

Although Ryan claims that the budget offers a “better way” to address widespread poverty and near poverty in the United States, this approach to policymaking is anything but a better way. In actuality, it is an egregious transgression of the foundational ethical principle of every major religion: loving our neighbors and caring for their needs as if they are our own.