The Martin Luther King You Don´t See on TV

On this day, April 4, 2011, 43 years ago Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, where he´d been organizing marches for sanitation workers and theirright to have a public employees union and to bargain collectively.

You won't see it on TV, but in the last years of his life, Dr. King called for “radical changes” in our economy and questioned a militaristic foreign policy that served Western “capitalists” — prompting denunciations of King in mainstream media.

For decades, two founders of RootsAction — Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon — have been writing articles to reveal this buried history.

Please read one of those articles — and more importantly, forward this email far and wide.

Although not mentioned in mainstream media nowadays, it was King who declared in 1967 that the United States was “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”

As our country expands its military presence around the world, we need to heed this prophetic leader who criticized Washington for providing “military funds with alacrity and generosity” while dispensing “poverty funds with miserliness.”

Check out King´s still–largely–suppressed “Beyond Vietnam” and “Why I Am Opposed to the War” speeches — and powerful video excerpts from the King you won´t see on TV.

Dr. King´s struggle against militarism and for economic justice continues today. That´s why we stand with our friends at We Are One, who are organizing nationwide today in solidarity with working people in Wisconsin and dozens of other states. Find your local event here.

RootsAction is a new online action group endorsed by Jim Hightower, Barbara Ehrenreich, Cornel West, Daniel Ellsberg, Glenn Greenwald, Naomi Klein, Bill Fletcher Jr., Laura Flanders, former U.S. Senator James Abourezk and Coleen Rowley.