No problemo there, Janie. I am, as usual, mildly amused at the knots people in this forum put their knickers in over anon posting.

I would like to clarify two things, and then stepping back here (we are getting quite circular in this discussion). First, I never do anything to dishonor King, I simply have strong feelings, working in public K12 education, about the effectiveness of the holiday. I base my opinion on working with kids day in and day out, in a poor, predominantly African American school (over 80%), and my colleagues who are just over 50% African American. We have one staff member who is African American who just flat out refuses to participate. Another who attended King's funeral. Some staff don't do much for MLK Day because they know it's ineffective, and focus instead on teaching African immigrant and African American arts, history, and cultures year round (my personal preference), like we are trying this year with the Serengeti migration.

Secondly, this whole non-violence business always trips my trigger. For one thing--how many people did the Black Panthers murder, exactly? Can any of the pacifist sorts here tell me that? Or actually, how many people did the black liberation movement of the 1960s murder?

Now, on the other hand, how many black activists were murdered by vigilantes, white paramilitaries, or government police?

It is far too easy to be a pacifist when the gun isn't being held to your head, or your house or church being firebombed or burned down with your family in it. That happened to HUNDREDS (if not thousands) of African American, American Indian, and Latino activists and their families in those days. So yeah, I'm real skeptical of white, middle class, neo-liberal pacifism. It's a belief system that seems on very shaky ground to me, considering it's a belief system that rarely gets tested harshly, like Stokely Carmichael's belief system was.

Finally, there are also a lot of white, middle class, neo-liberals who believe movements for political change should embrace pacifism as a belief system to make them (the middle class neo-liberals) feel more comfortable and at ease in ways that won't challenge their race advantages and the racial status quo. They flat out refuse to accept that it is perferctly legitimate for activists to use non-violence as a tactic/strategy, without being a pacifist or claiming the entire movement adheres to a Gandhian belief system.

Using non-violent direct action as a political tactic isn't the same thing as having a pacifist or Gandhian non-violent belief system. Condemning the entire black liberation movement for not adhering to the former, rather than the latter, is like condemning someone for not believing in religion.

People conveniently forget that the Gandhian principles of non-violence weren't effective in India. There are some who would argue they weren't effective here or in South Africa either, and that it was many other factors converging that eventually forced social changes--in India, for the worse as it turned out (civil war and partition).