Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Today is Martin Luther King Day.

Most of the problems that Dr. King sought to correct still plague our nation--- racism, discrimination, inequality, poverty, lack of access to health care, unemployment. And, once again people are dying in a senseless, immoral, and illegal, imperialist war based upon lies and deceit.

Racism is a dirty tool used to keep people divided and remains the main obstacle to forging the kind of unity that is needed to correct all the other problems. Racism, combined with a heavy dose of anti-communism has been the concoction that has been used by big-business corporate interests for over one hundred years to poison the minds of the American people, especially the working class, in order to keep people from understanding the true nature of capitalism and its present stage of imperialism which many refer to as capitalist globalization.

The struggle for jobs at real living wages for all workers has to be placed on the agenda today. The corporations have people fighting one another for poverty wage jobs like dogs fighting over bones.

The struggle for single-payer, universal health care must become a top priority. We need to reject all the phony schemes and "Band-Aid" solutions promising to "fix" the health care mess which are really, like racism and anti-communism, just being thrown into the capitalist witches' brew in order to disorient our struggle to achieve access to health care for all. There is no such thing as "affordable" universal health care. In order for health care to be universal it must be comprehensive, all-inclusive, free, publicly financed and publicly administered.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. advocated building a progressive movement for social change; the foundation of which is created from equality, jobs for all at real living wages, access to health care for all, and peace.

These were, and remain, the central features of a progressive agenda that all liberal and progressive thinking people can unite around...

Building this progressive movement is part of the legacy, and unfinished work, left to us by Dr.King.

Dr. King recognized the centrality of bringing working people into this progressive struggle... as he focused on doing this he was murdered.