Happy Birthday and Thank You, Martin Luther King

You don't have to be African-American to appreciate who King was, what he did, or feel sorrow that we lost him so soon. I remember so keenly the forgiveness that his son extended to the man charged with killing him (although I'm still not fully convinced Ray acted alone).

We need men like King today. Men and women who rise up and change the world despite the much tossed at them. We need dreams and we need to find ways to fulfill those dreams.

When I was growing up, you saw these awful pictures of race riots in Newark and Watts and other places. The problems that helped fuel those riots did not magically get resolved. Unfortunately, however, through the introduction of crack and other drugs, we've seen large populations of the males in such neighborhoods end up in prisons rather than being activists in the streets. It makes me wonder how much our government indeed sanctions some of this to make it harder for voices of color - operating outside of the traditional system - to rise up.