Martin Luther King Jr. (Wikipedia)

Martin Luther King Jr. Day isn’t just a national holiday; it’s a time for celebrating the life and accomplishments of the civil rights leader. This evening, take a respite from the daily grind and go relax to some tunes at the Upper West Side’s Symphony Space, where performers like Grammy Award-winning Catherine Russell & Her Band, Liberty City’s April Yvette Thompson, pianist/composer Anthony Coleman, Anthony Russell and klezmer clarinetist Michael Winograd will be honoring Martin Luther King Jr. with a night full of music. We can’t wait to see how that klezmer clarinet fits into the program.

Peter Jay Sharp Theatre, 2537 Broadway. Event begins at 6:30 pm. For more information, visit SymphonySpace.org or call (212) 864-5400.

The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C., with the quotation. (Photo: F. E. White / Flickr)

Though poet Maya Angelou has argued that an inscription on the side of the recently unveiled, poorly reviewed Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C., makes the civil-rights leader "look like an arrogant twit," the monument's architect has told The Washington Post that the controversial quotation will stay.

The line in question, cut into the side of the structure reads, “I was a drum major for justice, peace, and righteousness." However, it turns out that it was actually paraphrased from a lengthier and far more nuanced quotation from Dr. King.

What Dr. King in fact said was, “Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter.” This sounds quite a bit different to The Observer's ears.

The architect behind the project, Ed Jackson Jr., has said that space issues were partially to blame for the shortened phrase, but he has also defended the new wording. “The word ‘if’ suggests that ... he’s not sure of who he was," Mr. Jackson said. "We have the historical perspective... [to] say emphatically he was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness.”

2012: "[T]hree of the last seven presidential elections swung by third-party candidates who were in the race mainly as acts of self-flattery." [Gregg Easerbrook]

KSM: Not being tried in NY. [New York Post]

KSM: Bloomberg applauds the move. [Javier Hernandez]

Living Wage: More on MLKIII's advocacy here. [Daniel Massey]

Blogs: The Times tumbles. [FishbowlNY]

State Budget: Committee to Save NY applauds Cuomo, in a tv ad. [Liz Benjamin]

State Budget: Buffalo eyes the UB2020 plan, hoping it doesn't become UB2040. [Buffalo.edu]

Education Staff: A 22-year veteran departs. [Celeste Katz]

FOIL: Redactions, at the New York Racing Association. [Times Union]

Alan Hevesi: Due to be sentenced Friday. [Josh Robin]

The evening had the feeling of a raucous revival, with the capacity audience urging on union officials and city councilmen with calls of "that's right!" "tell it!" and beginning call-and-response chants of "Pass the bill -- right now!" Beneath a huge blue banner reading LIVING WAGE NOW!, senior pastor Jesse T. Williams began the night with a call to action.

"The minimum wage is a poverty wage and it is inadequate to live off of for an individual, let alone a family, in New York," Williams thundered. He intertwined references to Dr. King with pointed messages to elected official and urged city council speaker Christine Quinn to hold a long-delayed hearing on a living wage bill.

The living wage is currently set at ten dollars an hour with health benefits or $11.50 without, compared to the state minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. The Fair Wage for New Yorkers Act would mandate this wage for employees of city-subsidized developments, including workers at businesses developed on land owned by the city. It would also lift a ceiling on the wage, which was capped at ten dollars an hour in a 2002 bill, so it can rise in proportion to inflation. Recent amendments offer exemptions for developments making less than a million dollars a year and nonprofits.

The issue became prominent in the spring of 2009, when an attempt to transform the vacant Kingsbridge Armory in the Bronx into a shopping mall fell apart after the developers -- who were looking at about $17 million in tax breaks from the city -- rejected an agreement requiring a living wage for employees of the businesses that would occupy the building, leading the city council to resoundingly vote down the development, 45-1.

The defeat was a rebuke for Bloomberg and energized proponents of the living wage. It appears to still be a rallying point, something Bronx president Ruben Diaz, Jr., took advantage of in his time at the pulpit.

"We said listen, if you want charity, you have to be charitable," he said. "If you want a public benefit, then your project has to benefit the public."

Rep. Charlie Rangel, a fixture in Harlem, also made a surprise appearance. He drew parallels to the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, recalling that when he undertook the 54-mile walk from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery, he did not realize what was at stake.

"I had no idea that march was making history, but I want each and every one of you here tonight to take a deep breath and realize you are making history," he said.

City councilman Oliver Koppell, who joined Annabel Palma in introducing the bill, told the audience the legislation had garnered a 29-vote majority and said he was urging Quinn to hold a hearing. In an interview after the rally, he said she seems to be warming to the bill, and noted supporting it would give her an opportunity to tamp down criticism of her decision to postpone a vote on paid sick leave. But the more urgent battle, Koppell said, is to win Bloomberg's support.

"The biggest problem is the approval of the mayor, but we can't let the mayor control this," Koppell said. "I'm not totally pessimistic about the chances of getting the mayor to support this."

The mayor's specially appointed policy analysts may be less optimistic about the bill's repercussions. A yet-to-be-published study commissioned by the city's Economic Development Council has already led a chorus of critics to charge that the authors' past research shows a pattern of bias against wage standards. Conversely, a recent report by the Center for American Progress examined 15 U.S. cities that have a living wage in place -- including Los Angeles and Philadelphia -- and concluded that they did not sacrifice jobs.

City comptroller John Liu and council member Inez Dickens also spoke. City council members Melissa Mark-Viveritos, Letitia James and Gale Brewer attended.

The power of mass images is not a new thing. In the 1960’s and onward, images of wealth in the west eventually exposed the weakness of the communist regime running the old Soviet bloc. There is the story, perhaps apocryphal; of Nikita Khrushchev narrating a film of Harlem in the 1960’s to demonstrate poverty in America. Instead, his poor, beleaguered constituents focused on the nylons hanging on backyard clothes lines and the number of fine autos in the street, and saw wealth rather than poverty.  Then there was that famous video of the “tank guy” darting to and fro in Tiananmen Square twenty years ago, literally placing his body in the path of the machine of state.  The transformative power of the mass media has changed governance and made it more difficult for the state to wall off the outside world.

 In the past two years, we’ve seen the transformative impact of the internet and cellular technology. Instead of a handful of news photographers hiding to capture images at Tiananmen Square, we now see millions of people in the street, cell phones in hand, taking increasingly high quality videos and photos of state oppression. Every day the pictures from Iran appear in graphic detail on our screens. In the book 1984, George Orwell prophesized that Big Brother would watch over us. Now, it looks like we get to watch over Big Brother too. The benefit of a world with no privacy may very well be a world with no secrecy.
 
There are now four billion cell phones in use throughout the world, and many of them can capture and transmit images. When coupled with social networking websites, they make millions of people both producers and consumers of information. While the information on the web is difficult to verify and easy to manipulate, it is a fact of modern political life.
 
In the Obama presidential campaign here in the United States we saw another example of the transformative impact of the World Wide Web. According to the Washington Post’s Jose Antonio Vargas:
“…3 million donors made a total of 6.5 million donations online adding up to more than $500 million. Of those 6.5 million donations, 6 million were in increments of $100 or less. The average online donation was $80, and the average Obama donor gave more than once.”   
 
The mobilization of the public through the web has managed to overcome the anti-democratic impact of money in our electoral system. When the United States Supreme Court ruled that political campaign contributions were a form of speech that could not be limited, our ability to regulate the role of money in politics was effectively ended. The use of the web to raise campaign cash first came to prominence during Howard Dean’s presidential campaign and was raised to an art form during the Obama campaign. The impact of the web on political fundraising is the most significant change in political campaigning since JFK beat Nixon in their first TV debate back in 1960. 
 
The impact of technology on political communication is not a new phenomenon. Obama, like Jack Kennedy before him, managed to master a new technology before any other politician. FDR set the pattern when he learned to use the radio to communicate directly with the public during his fireside chats throughout the Depression and World War II.
 
The internet and cell phones add a new dimension to political technology; they are interactive media. In addition to the images presented on the web, the internet allows people to quickly spread ideas, information and organize political protest. Information comes to the public and from the public as well.  Efforts to jam and shut down these technologies are nearly always overcome by hackers and clever political organizers. In the case of Iran, no one can predict the future or even the immediate outcome of this conflict.  But something is changing in politics.  Perhaps it is as President Obama remarked recently, quoting  Dr. King:
 “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice’ “I believe that. The international community believes that. And right now, we are bearing witness to the Iranian people’s belief in that truth, and we will continue to bear witness.”

Bearing witness may not be enough, but it’s a start.

The video is from a January 19 breakfast in Harlem that Bloomberg hosted in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

At the event, Bloomberg spoke about education reform and referred at length to King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, where the slain civil rights leader referred to “clouds of inferiority in their mental skies” that form in children when they're young.

But the video posted by the mayor's office doesn’t include the line I thought was most striking, which is when Bloomberg paints himself as an agent fulfilling King’s dream.

In the speech, Bloomberg said, “We still have a long way to go, but I’m glad to say those clouds are starting to part. Since the state legislature granted us control of the school system in 2002, we’ve replaced a culture of excuses with a culture of accountability.”

But at a breakfast in Harlem this morning honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Dinkins praised Obama.

“I think it is important to recognize that unfortunately we do live in a racist society," Dinkins said. "There is a legacy of slavery. But things are getting better all the time. And if we hang in there, and continue to work and support the Barack Obamas of our day, we will one day realize Dr. King’s dream.”

"Only a charlatan would believe that we have not come a long way in race relations in this country,” Paterson says,

Then, after listening to a few speeches, Bloomberg walked into another room to answer questions from reporters, positioning himself in front of a picture of a “New York for Obama-Biden” poster.

I pointed out the sign to the mayor, and asked him to talk about why he hadn’t endorsed in the presidential primary or general election.

“Because I thought both [Obama and McCain] were friends of mine, and I represent 8.3 million people in this city, some of whom favored one candidate, some who favored another, and I would have to work with whoever got elected,” he said.

Bloomberg struck a less passive tone the op-ed he wrote in The New York Times announcing he wouldn’t run for president. Then, he wrote, "[t]he race is too important to sit on the sidelines, and so I have changed my mind in one area. If a candidate takes an independent, nonpartisan approach — and embraces practical solutions that challenge party orthodoxy — I'll join others in helping that candidate win the White House."

He didn't campaign for either candidate, likely a good thing for his relationship with both Democrats and Republicans.

Later, a reporter asked Bloomberg why he hadn’t filed a campaign finance report for his next mayoral race, something his opponent Anthony Weiner has been griping about. Doing so would disclose how much money his campaign has spent thus far.

“We’ve done nothing that requires a filing,” the mayor said.

Bloomberg’s campaign done some hiring: campaign manager Bradley Tusk, spokesman Howard Wolfson, and operative Matt Walter. But they all were hired one day after January 11, the deadline for the latest filings.

The next filing date is March 15, 2009.