"Here it comes again. This weekend we'll see a lot of media coverage of Martin Luther King, Jr. on the occasion of the holiday in his honor. But we'll hear very little about what he really was - a brave and visionary leader whose vision is as relevant today as it ever was.

"One year ago I listed ten quotes by Dr. King and mourned the lack of a movement that would advance his kind of vision. Then came the strike in Madison and the Occupy movement, which began a long-overdue national debate about economic, as well as racial inequality.

"In this new environment, Dr. King's insights can help us move than debate forward in the year to come, and will provide inspiration for today's movement activists - and tomorrow's. Here they are, updated for today's political, cultural, and economic changes:

"True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring." Where Do We Go From Here? August 1967 speech. 

"A long chain of corporations and banks enriched itself by triggering the events that led to the Great Recession, and many of them took Federal bailout money when it happened. Each of them has a Corporate Social Responsibility policy, designed to show they're good citizens who give back to the community. And each of them has a fleet of lobbyists working to protect their privileged status and tax benefits.

"The poverty rate, which had been declining, started to rise again in 2000. That year it stood at 11.3%, but by 2009 the Census Bureau reported that it had climbed back to 14.3%. At last count, 46 million Americans lived in poverty, more than 15 percent of the population. More than 16 million of them are children, which means that nearly one in four American kids (22 percent) is living in poverty.

"Is that okay with you?

"The situation has become so grave that The Nation responded by allocating an entire page to poverty, which is managed by Greg Kaufman. Sadly, it is now essential reading if we're to understand the real state of our union. As Kaufman points out, one study suggests that 340,000 children joined the ranks of the impoverished last year.

"As the New York Times reported last September, another 2.6 million people slipped below the official poverty line in 2010. The official total of impoverished Americans was the highest it's been in the 52 years that it has been reported. For white Americans, the figure was 9.9 percent. The poverty rate for African Americans surged to 27.4 percent. For Hispanics the figure was 26.6 percent. For African American children the figure was 39 percent.

I"s that okay with you?"

"A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth." Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence, April 1967 speech.

"Hello, Occupy!

"The gap between the wealthy and the rest of society is greater now than it was when Dr. King spoke those words in April, 1967. The progress we made toward reducing poverty is being eroded as the result of increasingly maldistributed wealth, Wall Street's reckless gambling, and the cost of the Great Recession that followed. Wall Street's doing fine, now that it has been rescued by the American public. But the American public isn't doing so well. We threw a life preserver to the drowning bankers, and now they're sitting on the shore as millions of their rescuers go down for the third time.

"Income inequality in this country is worse than it is in Egypt. As economist Edward Wolffexplains, wealth inequality has more than doubled in this country since the mid 1970s. The GINI coefficient, which measures economic inequality, has risen nearly 20% since it was first measured in this country (coincidentally, the same year Dr. King's speech was given.)

"This increasing disparity in wealth has been greatest for the top 0.5% of earners - the wealthiest of the wealthy - yet their tax burden has dropped from 70% in 1967 to 35% today (it was scheduled to "soar" to 39.6% until the Obama/McConnell tax deal of December 2010). And hedge fund managers - including the billionaires - continue to pay 15% instead of the 28% commonly paid by teachers, nurses, and police officers. (One hedge fund manager likened the possibility of a change to Hitler's invasion of Poland.)

"The Federal minimum wage, however, has dropped from $6.58 in fixed-dollar terms (1996 equivalent) to $5.29 since this speech was given. When Dr. King gave his speech, it was possible to support a family of three on this wage and stay out of poverty, but that's no longer possible."

Go read the rest.

As Eskows writes: "See you at the demonstrations."