On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we honor the memory of our nation’s greatest civil rights hero. Former President Obama, our nation’s first black president, took to Twitter this morning to share a powerful message about the nature of political activism and the lessons that Martin Luther King still has to teach the American people – especially in these trying times of contempt and fear.
Dr. King was 26 when the Montgomery bus boycott began. He started small, rallying others who believed their efforts mattered, pressing on through challenges and doubts to change our world for the better. A permanent inspiration for the rest of us to keep pushing towards justice.
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) January 15, 2018
His remarks are a painful reminder of how far our government has fallen and just how monstrously poor a successor our nation rewarded him with.
For his part, President Donald “Shithole” Trump couldn’t be bothered to do anything beyond than retweet the message that his White House communications team send out, dutifully reading a prepared script of empty, sanitized platitudes that his near-daily acts of racism render entirely meaningless.
"Dr. King's dream is our dream. It is the American Dream. It's the promise stitched into the fabric of our Nation, etched into the hearts of our people, and written into the soul of humankind." pic.twitter.com/tyUZGTecDY
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) January 15, 2018
President Obama’s words about the importance of small efforts are more important now than ever before. The upcoming mid-term elections might be one of the most significant elections in American history, and it’s going to take an enormous expenditure of energy and effort to wrest control of our democracy back away from the plutocratic Republicans and their racist cronies.
If we want to see true racial, social, and economic justice in the United States, we’re going to need to embrace the message and the spirit of Martin Luther King’s beliefs more dearly than ever before.
