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Community Corner

Happy 85th Birthday, Dr. King!

We in America may never again have a national leader as loving, as brilliant, as brave and as truthful as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., but we have the words he wrote, the sermons he preached and the speeches he delivered.  

This is one of my favorite MLK quotes, from his April 4, 1967 sermon at the Riverside Church in NYC, delivered exactly one year before he was assassinated in Memphis.

"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."

If we had followed Dr. King's example (He moved his family into a Chicago slum in 1966 to illustrate the problems of those who had to live there, then organized the buying and renovation of slums to sell to tenants for less than they had paid in monthly rent.) and if we had listened to his message of brotherhood and peace, we might have put and end to poverty and to war by now.  

Instead, our military adventures have impoverished our once great nation and homeless and hungry families roam the streets of America in rags, 7,000 in Boston alone.

Let us celebrate his life today and be inspired to work for his dream of the "beloved community."

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