Monday, January 14, 2008

The federal government will not observe Martin Luther King Jr. Day until a week from today. But with King's birthday coming tomorrow, why wait for the holiday to remember him?

Democratic politicians certainly aren't waiting.

Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) uses King's language in his "fierce urgency of now" plea. He has spoken about King's hope of ending segregation. An August address to Hispanic voters at a National Council of La Raza event quoted from a letter King sent to C¿sar Ch¿vez during the labor activist's 1968 hunger strike, saying, "Our separate struggles are really one."

And on his Facebook page, Obama's favorite quote is from King: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) mentioned King herself last week but found a different message. [Story, A1.]

Yesterday she called King "one of the people that I admire most in the world" and said: "Dr. King didn't just give speeches. He marched, he organized, he protested, he was gassed, he was beaten, he was jailed. He understood that he had to move the political process and bring in those who were in political power."

And the Democrats' 2004 presidential candidate, Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), also quoted King last week as he announced his endorsement of Obama in South Carolina: "Martin Luther King said the time is always right to do what is right."