Portside

As our nation celebrates King’s life, we would do well by his legacy to embrace his powerful vision of economic justice.

The recently released memo notes that Hill told Derian about a meeting Kissinger held with Argentine Foreign Minister Cesar Augusto Guzzetti the previous June. Guzzetti, according to that document, told Kissinger, "our main problem in Argentina is terrorism." Kissinger replied, "If there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly. But you must get back quickly to normal procedures." In other words, go ahead with your killing crusade against the leftists.

In the waning days of the Bush presidency, Special Operations forces were reportedly deployed in about 60 countries around the world. By 2010, that number had swelled to 75, according to Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post. In 2011, Special Operations Command (SOCOM) spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told TomDispatch that the total would reach 120. Today, that figure has risen higher still.

Thankfully, there is ample evidence of activists around the nation celebrating King’s legacy in ways that expose ongoing racial and economic inequalities. The Dream Defenders, the Moral Monday protests,and the Fight For 15 all exemplifiy King’s legacy.

“When we talk about women at the table, the men see them as the tablecloth,” said Hibaaq Osman, an NGO leader who has been working with Syrian women and pushing for their inclusion. “The future of Syria should not exclusively be decided by those who carry guns.”

An appeals court has decided that the School Board wrongly terminated more than 7,000 teachers after Hurricane Katrina. Those teachers were not given due process, and many teachers had the right to be rehired as jobs opened up in the first years after the storm, the court said in a unanimous opinion.

There is something about the Common Core standards and testing, about their demand for uniformity and standardization, that reeks of early twentieth century factory-line thinking. In the present climate, the Common Core standards and testing will become the driving force behind the creation of a test-based meritocracy.

Sharon died last week, eulogized by the very people he despised and turned into a shallow folk hero. The Ministry of Education compared him to Moses. In real life he was a very complex person, as complex as Israel. His personal history is interwoven with the history of Israel. His main legacy was catastrophic: scores of settlements which he implanted all over the West Bank – each of them a landmine which will have to be removed at great risk when the time comes.