Just a few years ago at TPMCafe.com, I linked to a video of the "I Have a Dream" speech for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. But that video is no longer available online; you can pay $10 to get a copy. And so here's a link to the radio show On The Media's segment called "Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Public Imagination." Producer Jamie York examines the oral tradition within which King was working when he created his landmark "I Have a Dream" speech—and the capitalist tradition in which it has been trademarked and licensed.

The standard criticism of Cornel West is that while he started his career as an excellent philosopher, he gave that up in favor of just being a celebrity (West left Harvard in a dispute with then-president Larry Summers over whether he was pulling his scholarly weight, and while he still teaches at Princeton, he hasn't produced scholarship in many years). West would probably counter that being a public intellectual is a worthy endeavor -- bringing a learned perspective to contemporary debates -- and perhaps more worthwhile than writing dusty tomes on arcane philosophical issues that won't be read by anyone apart from other philosophy professors.

Here at the Prospect, we've been wondering whether the surge organized labor saw in Wisconsin could be sustained and even spread across the country. Now, Chris Good at The Atlantic says unions are trying to organize rallies on the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in Memphis. King was in Memphis to help sanitation workers.

After organizing rallies around the country during Wisconsin's legislative fight over collective bargaining, the labor movement will try to make April 4 a massive day of nationwide mobilization.
The AFL-CIO, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the National Education Association (NEA), and other unions are organizing rallies across the country on the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination.

Kayla Kearney came out to her high school at this year's Martin Luther King Jr. assembly. Kearney is a senior at Maria Carrillo High School in Santa Rosa, California. The theme of this year's assembly, the school's sixth, was "Breaking the Silence: About Things That Matter."

It's a beautiful speech. Here's a bit from the end:

In 1854, Henry David Thoreau wrote in Walden,
his chronicle of his time spent puttering about in the woods, that the
advent of the telegraph was unlikely to make us much better informed:
"We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some
weeks nearer to the New; but perchance the first news that will leak
through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess
Adelaide has the whooping cough." Thoreau could be a bit of a downer.

A mural featuring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at Ali Air Base in Iraq, near the city of Nasiriyah.

(Flickr/alohateam)