MLK Dedication Hijacked By Theme of Social and Economic Justice and Support of Occupy Wall Street Mob

Rev. Jesse Jackson addressed the Occupy Wall Street movement at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Dedication on Sunday.  King, Jackson says, would be sad that a “redemptive moment of historic proportions” that came with the election of Obama in 2008 “has been met with unrelenting retribution, retaliation and unprecedented opposition.” “Many seem willing just to sink the ship just to destroy the captain,” Jackson says.”We must do better than that.”

Rev. Al Sharpton says the marker is not a monument of old times past. “This is a marker for the fight for justice today and a projection for the fight for justice in the future because we will not stop until we get the equal justice justice (that) Dr. King fought for.” He also calls for “economic justice” and the protection of programs like Medicare. “This is not about Obama, this is about our Mama, and we’re going to vote like we never voted before,” Sharpton says.

Bernice King , says she believes that he would be supportive now of protests by the poor and the unemployed. “I hear my father say: We must have a radical revolution of values and a reordering of our priorities in this nation. I hear my father say, as we dedicate this monument, we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society, to a person-oriented society.”

Martin Luther King III calls for an end of “conservative policies that exclude people. … We must finally get rid of racism.”King III praises the “occupy” economic movement that began on Wall Street, saying, “We must stand up for economic justice.”

Former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young told the crowd at the memorial that the GOP was to blame for the recent banking crisis, tracing it back to the repeal in 1999 of provisions of the Glass-Steagall Act, which had separated investment banks from commercial banks.

Obama, “I raise all this because nearly 50 years after the march on Washington, our work, Dr. King’s work, is not yet complete,” Mr. Obama said. “And so as we think about all the work that we must do, rebuilding an economy that can compete on a global stage, fixing our schools so that every child, not just some, but every child gets a world-class education, making sure that our health care system is affordable and accessible to all and that our economic system is one in which everybody gets a fair shake, and everybody does their fair share, let us not be trapped by what is, we can’t be discouraged by what is, we’ve got to keep pushing for what ought to be.”“If he were alive today, I believe he would remind us that the unemployed worker can rightly challenge the excesses of Wall Street without demonizing all who work there,” the president said. “Those with power and privilege will often decry any call for change as divisive. They’ll say any challenge to the existing arrangements are unwise and destabilizing. Dr. King understood that peace without justice was no peace at all.”