If you want someone to be ignored, then build a life-size bronze statue of them and stick it in the middle of town.

While many Americans have been eagerly awaiting the memorial which formally sets in stone King's success in expanding civil rights, let's not be to quick to celebrate. The opening of Washington D.C.'s new MLK memorial has been postponed due to the hopefully exaggerated arrival of Hurricane Irene. This gives us more time to think about the nature of this memorial.

Some of the major contributors to the national memorial include Disney, AT&T, and Verizon. If King were active today he would likely have urged people to support the strike against Verizon to protect worker's rights. Verizon made $20 billion in profit in recent years, avoids paying corporate taxes, and is proving itself anti-union and anti-worker's benefits.


Hopefully the memorial will serve to reopen and expand public interest in civil rights and the peaceful strategies of civil disobedience.


your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

Charles Bukowski

Philosophy stares, but brings no reasoned solution, for from nothing to being there is no logical bridge



We passed the ice of pain, and came to a dark ravine, and there we sang with the sea; the wide, the bleak abyss shifted with our slow kiss