MLK would not have hugged this out. MLK would not appreciate All Lives Matter. MLK would not have been a big teddy bear spewing platitudes about equality that make us feel good about doing nothing other than thinking burning crosses is bad, not using the N word, and waiting for the "arc of history" to do the hard work for us.
MLK would have resisted authority. MLK would have broken unjust laws. MLK would have gotten arrested again and again. MLK would have been "no angel." MLK would not have just "obey[ed] the fucking law." MLK would have died an enemy of the state. MLK would have fucked up your commute home. MLK would have gotten in our face. MLK would have put his protests where we couldn't look away. MLK would have told us to stop talking and stop telling black people what is and isn't their own oppression. MLK would have harshly censured anyone who wanted stability and peace over equality and justice. MLK would have told anyone practicing respectability politics about that they were a bigger obstacle to justice than outright, drunk uncle, Trump loving racists. MLK would have spoken vociferously against capitalism because of its perpetual need for an underclass to labor. (Yes, THAT capitalism. The capitalism most of us think is the best, most moral system there could be and makes the world a better place and is more about human nature than that dirty communism. The capitalism upon which the star spangled awesome US of A is built.) MLK would have condemned the capitalistic gains and white supremacy born of perpetual foreign wars. MLK would have seen right through the claim that you would only listen if his protests somehow became so quiet that you couldn't hear them and didn't have to see them. MLK would have said he could not condemn violent rioters even if he himself used non-violent civil disobedience. MLK would have told us that our silence made us complicit in white supremacy every damned day.
Because he DID do all that stuff.
Please let's quit loving him because of the one sound bite from the "I have a Dream" speech and that love/hate quote that sounds so cuddly.
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