Portside

Should intelligence agencies be able to sweep email, read texts, track calls, locate us by GPS? Much of the conversation swirls around the possibility that agencies like the N.S.A. or the F.B.I. will use such information not to serve national security but to carry out personal and political vendettas. King’s experience reminds us that these are far from idle fears, conjured in the fevered minds of civil libertarians. They are based in the hard facts of history.

On the line are the lives of decent hardworking Americans, trying to cross over into the dignity of work but still caught in the barbwire of an historic global recession. The jobless rate for young African Americans (16-19 years old) was 35.5 percent in December.

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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.

Five writers reflect on Nelson Mandela's impact on the world on them personally

Everyone who marched has their own special memory. Although the event comes down to us mainly as the Rev Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech to the huge throng standing in the sweltering heat or sprawled cooling their toes in the Mall's reflecting pool, I remember it as one big picnic with everyone in their Sunday best and on their best manners firmly clasping hands in King's "beloved community". But it wasn't all kumbaya.

Incredibly, when King called for full employment in 1967, the national unemployment rate was under 4 percent. Flash forward to today: 56 consecutive months of unemployment above 7 percent, among African Americans above 13 percent, above 9 percent among Latinos. At our current rate of job creation, it would take another seven years to get the national unemployment rate down to 5 percent, where it was at the end of 2007.

Larger-than-expected crowds set to flock to Washington for 50th anniversary of King's 'I have a dream' speech in wake of recent court decisions that have fulled renewed debate on race