This year the CBC Massey Lectures celebrates fifty years with bestselling author, essayist, cultural observer, and famed New Yorker contributor Adam Gopnik.
His subject is
winter - the season, the space, the cycle. Gopnik takes us on an intimate tour of the artists, poets, composers, writers, explorers, scientists, and thinkers, who helped shape a new and modern idea of winter.
Listen to Winter: Five Windows on the Season Streaming files for this years lecture will be available until Friday, November 18. [more inside]
posted by infinite intimation
on Nov 14, 2011 -
11 comments
It is not our role to take power. It is our role to make the powerful frightened of us. And that's what we've forgotten. Give up that dream! Chris Hedges talks neoliberalism and neofeudalism, the civil rights movement, Camden, Obama, Clinton, Tea Parties, moral nihilism, inverted totalitarianism and corpocracy, NAFTA, welfare reform, health care, labor, poverty, Yugoslavia, post-industrial capitalism, economic crisis, imperial collapse, socialism, and democracy, among other things.
[more inside]
posted by gerryblog
on Apr 24, 2010 -
51 comments
MLK Jr: The First Attempt : Nearly 10 years before he was assassinated, as Dr. King signed copies of his book
Stride Toward Freedom,
Izola Ware Curry, a part-time maid from Georgia, stabbed him in the chest with a letter opener, nearly puncturing his aorta. Though she was eventually indicted for attempted murder, Ms. Curry was found
incompetent to stand trial and committed to Matteawan State Hospital for the criminally insane. Characteristically, Dr. King
forgave her and requested that she be rehabilitated as a productive member of society.
[more inside]
posted by Alison
on Jan 18, 2010 -
7 comments
Happy Birthday Dr. King. Today is Martin Luther King Day. He was born 80 years ago, on January 15th, 1929. He was assassinated on April 4, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He was just thirty-nine years old.
Tomorrow, more than four decades after Dr. King’s death, Barack Obama will take his oath of office to become the 44th president of the United States and the first African American president in US history. The Reverend Joseph Lowery, a civil rights icon who co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Dr, King, will deliver the benediction at the inauguration ceremony. Obama accepted the Democratic party nomination on the 45th anniversary of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, arguably his most famous address.
While Dr. King is primarily remembered as a civil rights leader, he also championed the cause of the poor and organized the Poor People"s Campaign to address issues of economic justice. Dr. King was also a fierce critic US foreign policy and the Vietnam War. [more inside]
posted by caddis
on Jan 19, 2009 -
30 comments
The Meaning of Box 722. Letters to Senator
Paul Douglas of Illinois in reaction to the 1966 civil rights bill, particularly the federal ban on racial discrimination in the sale and rental of housing. At the time, Chicago was the most segregated city in the north, with boundaries enforced by mob violence. By
Rick Perlstein, author of
Nixonland.
When I started researching NIXONLAND I knew the congressional elections of 1966 would form a crucial part of the narrative. They'd never really been examined in-depth before, but by my reckoning they were the crucial hinge that formed the ideological alignment we live in now. Via Brad DeLong.
posted by russilwvong
on Jun 5, 2008 -
15 comments
A year to the day before his death, Dr. Martin Luther King delivered
this speech at Riverside Church, New York City. In the last years of his life, King moved beyond anti-segregation activism to a broader indictment of American class structure and foreign policy. This is
The Martin Luther King You Don't See on TV.
posted by Mister_A
on Jan 15, 2007 -
56 comments
""We only have to recall the colour of the faces of those in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi who are most devastated by Katrina to know that there are not yet equal opportunities for all Americans." - Former President Jimmy Carter.
Coretta Scott King was
laid to rest Tuesday after a six-hour service attended by four presidents and 10,000 ordinary people who came to pay tribute to the first lady of the civil rights movement - and one of its last icons. But at an event designed to remember the lady who was as memorable as her late husband in fighting for civil rights, politics entered the fray with both former President Jimmy Carter and Rev Joseph Lowery taking
swipes at the Bush Administration. They say that there's a time and a place, and while this was clearly not the place, with
thousands of Katrina victims (mostly African-American) about to be evicted because of
budget cuts by the Bush administration, was it the
time?
posted by Effigy2000
on Feb 8, 2006 -
149 comments
"At the heart of their concerns, this query has often loomed large and loud: 'Why are you
speaking about war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the
voices of dissent?' '
Peace and civil rights don’t mix', they say. 'Aren’t you hurting the cause of your people', they ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known
me, my commitment or my calling."
posted by riviera
on Apr 4, 2003 -
9 comments
I See the Promised Land "Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord"---MLKing Jr.
posted by JohnR
on Dec 25, 2002 -
4 comments
Thank Mahalia Jackson for King's "I have a dream." "On August 28, 1963, under a nearly cloudless sky, more than 250,000 people, a fifth of them white, gathered near the Lincoln Memorial in Washington to rally for 'jobs and freedom.'... Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had originally prepared a short and somewhat formal recitation of the sufferings of African Americans attempting to realize their freedom in a society chained by discrimination. He was about to sit down when gospel singer
Mahalia Jackson called out, 'Tell them about your dream, Martin! Tell them about the dream!' Encouraged by shouts from the audience, King drew upon some of his past talks, and the result became the landmark statement of civil rights in America--a dream of all people, of all races and colors and backgrounds, sharing in an America marked by freedom and democracy."
posted by Carol Anne
on Jan 21, 2002 -
16 comments
2 students shot in MLK Jr. HS yesterday. "A gunman sneaked into Martin Luther King Jr. HS yesterday through a side door - evading 14 safety agents, two cops and metal-detectors - and shot and seriously wounded two boys headed to class, officials said. "
"The fact that the shooting occurred on King’s birthday was a "cruel irony," said [Manhattan Board of Education member Irving ] Hamer. King and the school stand for non-violence, he said, and "instead, we get a shooting."
posted by bkdelong
on Jan 16, 2002 -
13 comments
