August 28, 2013

War, the Tea Party, and 23 Other Things Pundits Say MLK Would Have Supported

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/11638547@N00/7894473018">Liz Mc</a>/Flickr

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Wednesday is the anniversary of the March on Washington. So it’s only natural for political commentators and columnists from all corners of the political spectrum to claim Martin Luther King, Jr.’s legacy as their own. “MLK was a conservative all along!” is a popular refrain; although it sweeps his anti-war, highly controversial, and widely disdained leftism under the rug.

On Monday, Politico published a piece on how King has been name-checked as a guaranteed supporter of… almost everything. In that spirit, here are 25 things that Martin Luther King, Jr. would surely support—according to partisans, living today, who are not Martin Luther King, Jr.:

Our war in Afghanistan

Our war in Iraq

Our (other) war in Iraq

The NATO peacekeeping mission in Bosnia

Ending drone warfare

Occupy Wall Street

The tea party

Obamacare

Repealing Obamacare

The Democratic Party

The Republican Party

Barack Obama

Mitt Romney

Palestine

Israel

Pro-choice advocates

Pro-life advocates

Same-sex marriage

“Traditional” marriage

Gun control

Gun rights

Climate action

Private property rights

An end to private property rights

“Today’s sci-fi“

I, for one, am confident that if King were alive today, he would be a huge fan of Battleship.

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We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

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