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Getbig Main Boards => Politics and Political Issues Board => Topic started by: Benny B on January 16, 2011, 07:42:02 AM
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By Earl Ofari Hutchinson
01/15/2011
Monday, January 17 marks the 25th anniversary of the Martin Luther King Day national holiday. President Obama and other administration officials have picked up on the call made repeatedly by the King family and civil rights and social service organizations for the day to be not just about celebration, pageantry, and parades, but a day of service.
Obama's "King initiative" for a day of service puts White House muscle behind the true meaning and spirit of the day and King's life and work. Polls show that a majority of Americans as individuals plan to observe the King holiday in some way.
However, the King holiday is still not the universally observed federal holiday that it could or should be. For the past few years the BNA, an Arlington, Virginia based business and information survey and print service, has taken an annual survey of businesses and governmental agencies to see who is and isn't celebrating observance of Martin Luther King Day.
And each year the results have shown the same disturbing thing. The King holiday is still at or near the bottom of the least celebrated national holidays. According to the BNA survey only one in three in ten employers (30 percent) will give all or most workers a paid holiday on Martin Luther Kind Day. In other words, the King holiday is still ignored by the majority of American businesses, the majority of organizations with a strong labor union presence and a fair number of municipalities.
It gets worse. Not only has there been only marginal and incremental increases in the number of businesses that officially acknowledge Martin Luther King Day in the past five years, but the number that do acknowledge it have actually dropped from the all-time high of 33 percent of businesses that gave employees the day off in 2008.
The employers and some municipalities that ignore the King holiday chalk up the failure to observe the day as simply a matter of cost, time and labor drain, instead of disrespect or any lack of appreciation for King. They argue they simply can't afford to shut down. The argument makes some sense in the case of small to medium-sized businesses. And with the recession still slamming that segment of American industry and many governmental agencies hard, cost is a real issue and concern. But that's not the whole answer as to why the King holiday is still shunned by many Americans.
The fight for a King national holiday has been bitter, contentious and controversial from the first moment that Michigan Democrat John Conyers introduced a Martin Luther King Day bill in Congress immediately after King's assassination in April, 1968. It took more than a decade for the bill to finally come to a vote in 1979. It failed, coming within five votes of passage. It took four more years of fierce battles in Congress, mass marches, demonstrations and countless petitions to get lawmakers to move on the legislation again.
Arch conservative North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms led the charge against the King holiday bill and questioned whether King was important enough to receive such an honor. He criticized King's opposition to the Vietnam war and repeatedly slurred him as an agitator, Communist, and, of course, unpatriotic. Then President Ronald Reagan also vehemently opposed the holiday, citing cost concerns. Reagan grudgingly signed the King bill into law in 1983 only after Congress passed it with an overwhelming veto-proof majority (338 to 90 in the House of Representatives and 78 to 22 in the Senate).
It took another three years before the first Martin Luther King Day was officially observed. It would take even more bitter fights over the next quarter century before die hard states such as Arizona, New Hampshire and Utah finally came on board and officially recognized the holiday.
But even that hasn't ended the controversy and the infighting over the King holiday. The latest ploy to trivialize the accomplishments of King and the holiday is the weather. Some school districts in North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia say that they will hold classes on King holiday to make up for the school time lost because of the recent record snowfall in those states. The Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, as well as other civil rights leaders, have loudly protested this latest insult to King. Sharpton went further and urged parents to not only keep their children at home on Martin Luther King Day, but to use the day as a teaching not moment buy day to educate them about the enduring significance of the civil rights movement to their lives today.
The good thing is that millions will celebrate and perform service on Martin Luther King Day. That's what the day should be about. Those that continue to ignore the day should get that message too.
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Same as columbus day and many other holidays wherte people just shop, sleep late, or play xbox.
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Black history month could easily be black history day-- which is really MLK day anyway. Nobody, knows, cares or remembers Dr. Kings dream except terrorist groups like the NAACP.
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By Earl Ofari Hutchinson
01/15/2011
Monday, January 17 marks the 25th anniversary of the Martin Luther King Day national holiday. President Obama and other administration officials have picked up on the call made repeatedly by the King family and civil rights and social service organizations for the day to be not just about celebration, pageantry, and parades, but a day of service.
Obama's "King initiative" for a day of service puts White House muscle behind the true meaning and spirit of the day and King's life and work. Polls show that a majority of Americans as individuals plan to observe the King holiday in some way.
However, the King holiday is still not the universally observed federal holiday that it could or should be. For the past few years the BNA, an Arlington, Virginia based business and information survey and print service, has taken an annual survey of businesses and governmental agencies to see who is and isn't celebrating observance of Martin Luther King Day.
And each year the results have shown the same disturbing thing. The King holiday is still at or near the bottom of the least celebrated national holidays. According to the BNA survey only one in three in ten employers (30 percent) will give all or most workers a paid holiday on Martin Luther Kind Day. In other words, the King holiday is still ignored by the majority of American businesses, the majority of organizations with a strong labor union presence and a fair number of municipalities.
It gets worse. Not only has there been only marginal and incremental increases in the number of businesses that officially acknowledge Martin Luther King Day in the past five years, but the number that do acknowledge it have actually dropped from the all-time high of 33 percent of businesses that gave employees the day off in 2008.
The employers and some municipalities that ignore the King holiday chalk up the failure to observe the day as simply a matter of cost, time and labor drain, instead of disrespect or any lack of appreciation for King. They argue they simply can't afford to shut down. The argument makes some sense in the case of small to medium-sized businesses. And with the recession still slamming that segment of American industry and many governmental agencies hard, cost is a real issue and concern. But that's not the whole answer as to why the King holiday is still shunned by many Americans.
The fight for a King national holiday has been bitter, contentious and controversial from the first moment that Michigan Democrat John Conyers introduced a Martin Luther King Day bill in Congress immediately after King's assassination in April, 1968. It took more than a decade for the bill to finally come to a vote in 1979. It failed, coming within five votes of passage. It took four more years of fierce battles in Congress, mass marches, demonstrations and countless petitions to get lawmakers to move on the legislation again.
Arch conservative North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms led the charge against the King holiday bill and questioned whether King was important enough to receive such an honor. He criticized King's opposition to the Vietnam war and repeatedly slurred him as an agitator, Communist, and, of course, unpatriotic. Then President Ronald Reagan also vehemently opposed the holiday, citing cost concerns. Reagan grudgingly signed the King bill into law in 1983 only after Congress passed it with an overwhelming veto-proof majority (338 to 90 in the House of Representatives and 78 to 22 in the Senate).
It took another three years before the first Martin Luther King Day was officially observed. It would take even more bitter fights over the next quarter century before die hard states such as Arizona, New Hampshire and Utah finally came on board and officially recognized the holiday.
But even that hasn't ended the controversy and the infighting over the King holiday. The latest ploy to trivialize the accomplishments of King and the holiday is the weather. Some school districts in North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia say that they will hold classes on King holiday to make up for the school time lost because of the recent record snowfall in those states. The Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, as well as other civil rights leaders, have loudly protested this latest insult to King. Sharpton went further and urged parents to not only keep their children at home on Martin Luther King Day, but to use the day as a teaching not moment buy day to educate them about the enduring significance of the civil rights movement to their lives today.
The good thing is that millions will celebrate and perform service on Martin Luther King Day. That's what the day should be about. Those that continue to ignore the day should get that message too.
Dr Kings real message was to wake the world up to white racism just as Ghandi did... Just as Mandela did and just as so many others did. Sadly the "filthy vine" is still in existence and still making comments and actions that shows why a Dr King, a Ghandi, a Mandela had to and will continue to rise. We have seen that everyone from politicians to the knuckleheads on message boards, that the desire to keep racism, sexism, religious discrimination going all the while cowering behind their remarks when attention is drawn to them.
I think this economic collapse is a BLESSING in disguise, because very soon all will be equally impoverished and without and none will have their "IMAGINED" feeling of superiority or comforts or safeguards or freedoms. It is at this point that vulnerability will set in and personality/attitudes will change where laws and punishments have failed to bring about.
This day is much bigger than civil rights for African Americans it is a day that thanks to the African Americans and their marches on Washington and standing up to government that not only brought the issues of CIVIL RIGHTS and put it onto the tables and front doors of Washington's politicians, but also put it on the front stage of the whole world for those who were led to believe that america was a supposed land of democracy and FREEDOM, that no such thing existed in the land that claimed it was this thing it was built on. To further the matters it was the joining of woman's groups, religious groups and the jewish groups with the millions strong African americans marching that allowed them to have the freedoms which they now enjoy...sadly these same groups which have benefitted from the African American and the marches have become just as great an enemy to the African american now as white men/government were in the height of the Civil Rights violations and movement.
Has this day been forgotten... certainly not and given the financial situation in america now it is about to be remembered all over again as the last gasps of discrimination will rise again as impoverishment takes hold and the need to blame someone for ones state of being comes into play. Those who have brought discrimination into existence the first time on the heel of the blame game will have another go at it, but this time the end result will not be what they hope for....
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