Free at last, they took your life, but they could not take your pride...

Though Bono has admitted that he was wrong about the time of day (it was the afternoon, not the "early morning") that song is playing through my head today. You see, "Pride (In the Name of Love)" was written to celebrate the courage and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Today is the fortieth anniversary of his assassination.

Many remember King's speeches and marches in the early 1960s, but few know how much of a liberal he was on issues such as the war, socio-economic status, the labor movement and others. King, like any great visionary, realized that the issue of race is felt in all of these struggles and that they, too, need to be focused on to reach a more perfect union.

This blog by Katrina Vanden Heuvel is a nice piece.

But what more brilliant picture can you paint than that his son has painted here.

Today is a remembrance of the great man who gave this great nation of ours a dream, but it is meaningless unless we work towards full achievement of that dream for all. That means confronting violence--not only the violence that comes at us, but the violence we create--and confronting socio-economic injustice in a real and meaningful way.

Today is a day of remembrance.

Today is a day of action.