MARTIN LUTHER

KING+Beethoven

MLK DAY NORTHVILLE HIGH SCHOOL

ZOOM IN, ZOOM OUT!

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

1929-1968

Michael Luther King, Jr. was born on January 15th to schoolteacher, Alberta King and Baptist minister, Michael Luther King residing at 501 Auburn Avenue. His father later changed both their names to Martin Luther King.

On April 4, 1968, while standing on a balcony at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, King was assassinated by James Earl Ray.

President Ronald Reagan signed the bill to make January 20th, the celebration of Dr. King’s birthday a national holiday.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. continues to make an impact in the life of today’s people! His story lives on…

They tell us ……….

… and they create a

MONUMENT

HISTORICIZE a little bit – before we forget entirely ….. Because of all the MONUMENTALIZATION!

Should we not celebrate MLK Day?

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) voted against the creation of the holiday to honor King, and later defended Arizona Republican Governor Mecham's rescinding of the state holiday in honor of King created by his Democratic predecessor.

Senator Jesse Helms (Republican-North Carolina) led opposition to the bill and questioned whether King was important enough to receive such an honor. He also criticized King's opposition to the Vietnam War and accused him of espousing "action-oriented Marxism."

Let us ZOOM out a bit more. A bit more CONTEXT

Wasn´t there another MARTIN?

… and since we found one German, let us just add another one!

1929 - 1968 1483 -1543 1770 - 1827

Click icon to add full page pictureMartin Luther 1483 - 1543The Reluctant Revolutionaryhttp://www.history.com/videos/martin-luther-sparks-a-revolution#martin-luther-sparks-a-revolution

"Here I stand, I can do no other, God help me, Amen..." (Martin Luther)

When an obscure monk named Martin Luther nailed 95 Theses - 95 stinging rebukes - attacking the mighty Catholic Church, and its head, Pope Leo X to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral he unleashed a tornado.

It was a hurricane of violence and revolution that raged across Europe, and changed the face of a continent forever.

• Why is the translation of the Bible into German a

formidable event?

• The Role of Latin as an Instrument of Power

• The German Bible: The Power of Dissemination of

the Word

• The Ability to Understand Each Other

• The Fight to Control the Word

• Is there a relationship with this historical precedent

and today´s attempts to control the meaning of the

word(s)?

Beethoven, 9th SymphonyWiener PhilharmonikerThielemannhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piJXGl8uSLU

Oh friends, not these tones!Rather, let us raise our voices in more pleasingAnd more joyful sounds!Joy! (Joy!)Joy! (Joy!)

Be embraced, you millions!This kiss for the whole world!Brothers, beyond the star-canopyMust a loving Father dwell.Be embraced,This kiss for the whole world!

Click icon to add full page picture"Beethoven is the friend and contemporary of the French Revolution, and he remained faithful to it even when, during the Jacobin dictatorship, humanitarians with weak nerves of the Schiller type turned from it, preferring to destroy tyrants on the theatrical stage with the help of cardboard swords. Beethoven, that plebeian genius, who proudly turned his back on emperors, princes and magnates - that is the Beethoven we love for his unassailable optimism, his virile sadness, for the inspired pathos of his struggle, and for his iron will which enabled him to seize destiny by the throat."

Igor Stravinsky

Igor Stravinsky1882-1971

Revolutionary Music?http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kW8wdpfkpM0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiH3vA7q0jo

HOW MUCH DO YOU HAVE TO EARN IN ORDER TO BELONG TO THE 1%?

INTERVIEW on the TODAY show, the day after the New Hampshire primary.

When the interviewer asked, “Are there no fair questions about the distribution of wealth without it being seen as envy, though?” Romney responded, “I think it’s fine to talk about those thingsin quiet rooms and discussions about tax policy and the like.”

Everyone can become rich.

Is it a MYTH? Is it a REALITY? Or

What is a SOCIAL CONTRACT? Do we depend on each other or are we lone warriors?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yva0VSN1_T4Ron PaulPrimary Debate

Should we care about others?

Henry Ford did it. Bill Gates did it. American life is built on the faith that others can do it, too: rise from humble origins to economic heights. “Movin’ on up,” George Jefferson-style, is not only a sitcom song but a civil religion.Baron von Münchhausen

Lügenbaron

“Former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, a Republican candidate for president, warned this fall that movement “up into the middle income is actually greater, the mobility in Europe, than it is in America.”

National Review, a conservative thought leader, wrote that “most Western European and English-speaking nations have higher rates of mobility.”

One reason for the mobility gap may be the depth of

American poverty, which leaves poor children starting especially far behind. Another may be the unusually large premiums that American employers pay for college degrees. Since children generally follow their parents’ educational trajectory, that premium increases the importance of family background and stymies people with less schooling.At least five large studies in recent years have found

the United States to be less mobile than comparable nations. A project led by Markus Jantti, an economist at a Swedish university, found that 42 percent of American men raised in the bottom fifth of incomes stay there as adults. That shows a level of persistent disadvantage much higher than in Denmark (25 percent) and Britain (30 percent) — a country famous for its class constraints.

Despite frequent references to the United States

as a classless society, about 62 percent of Americans (male and female) raised in the top fifth of incomes stay in the top two-fifths, according to research by the Economic Mobility Project of the Pew Charitable Trusts. Similarly, 65 percent born in the bottom fifth stay in the bottom two-fifths.By emphasizing the influence of family background,

the studies not only challenge American identity but speak to the debate about inequality. While liberals often complain that the United States has unusually large income gaps, many conservatives have argued that the system is fair because mobility is especially high, too: everyone can climb the ladder. Now the evidence suggests that America is not only less equal, but also less mobile.”Sabrina Tavernise, “Survey Finds Rising Perception of Class Tension.” NYT 01/11/2012

About two-thirds of Americans now believe there are “strong conflicts” between rich and poor in the United States, a survey by the Pew Research Center found, a sign that the message of income inequality brandished by the Occupy Wall Street movement and pressed by Democrats may be seeping into the national consciousness.

Is there evidence or is it just a phantasy of the ENVY crowd?

Or did something else happen between 1992 and 2007?

The current marginal tax rate for the highest income bracket—in other words, the tax rate on income above a threshold for the wealthiest taxpayers—of 35 percent is among the lowest since WWII, far lower than the 80 percent rate during the high-growth 1960s and the 39.6 percent rate of much of the 1990s.

BILL GATES: ‘I’M GENERALLY IN FAVOR’ OF THE RICH PAYING MORE IN TAXES |

“I just can’t imagine these millionaires and billionaires going down and barricading the streets because they are going to have to pay 4 or 5 percent more in taxes. I mean, it’s going to be rough for them,” he quipped.

“There’s certainly a case to be made that taxes should be more progressive,” he added.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdovVDYxItY

IS A SOCIAL CONTRACT SOCALISM?

“There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there, good for you. But, I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for.

You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory and hire someone to protect against this because of the work the rest of us did.

Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea. God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

Elizabeth WarrenHarvard University

How Can We Change this?

“And if you ask why America is more class-bound in practice than the rest of the Western world, a large part of the reason is that our government falls down on the job of creating equal opportunity.

The failure starts early: in America, the holes in the social safety net mean that both low-income mothers and their children are all too likely to suffer from poor nutrition and receive inadequate health care. It continues once children reach school age, where they encounter a system in which the affluent send their kids to good, well-financed public schools or, if they choose, to private schools, while less-advantaged children get a far worse education.

It’s no wonder, then, that Horatio Alger stories, tales of poor kids who make good, are much less common in reality than they are in legend — and much less common in America than they are in Canada or Europe.

And if children from our society’s lower rungs do manage to make it into a good college, the lack of financial support makes them far more likely to drop out than the children of the affluent, even if they have as much or more native ability. One long-term study by the Department of Education found that students with high test scores but low-income parents were less likely to complete college than students with low scores but affluent parents — loosely speaking, that smart poor kids are less likely than dumb rich kids to get a degree.

COLLECTIVE LEARNING

COLLECTIVE WORK

COMMON ACHIEVEMENTS

During the Vietnam War, King began to rethink his mission and turned his focus from racial discrimination to problems of poverty and economic injustice.

King expressed his disenchantment with President Johnson’s Vietnam policies.

HIS IDEAS ARE ALIVE WE NEED TO REMEMBER HIS RADICALISM

HE WAS AND IS A REVOLUTIONARY

ChangeTransformationAlterationModificationVariationConversionAdjustmentRevolutionDifferenceAmendmentEvolution

Bertolt BrechtQuestions from A Worker Who Reads

Who built Thebes of the seven gates?In the books you will find the name of kings. Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock? And Babylon, many times demolished.Who raised it up so many times? In what housesOf gold-glittering Lima did the builders live?Where, the evening that the Wall of China was finishedDid the masons go? Great RomeIs full of triumphal arches. Who erected them? Over whomDid the Caesars triumph? Had Byzantium, much praised in song,Only palaces for its inhabitants? Even in fabled AtlantisThe night the ocean engulfed itThe drowning still bawled for their slaves.

MARTIN LUTHER KINGDAYand BIG HISTORYNorthville 2012

The young Alexander conquered India.Was he alone?Caesar beat the Gauls.Did he not have even a cook with him?Philip of Spain wept when his armadaWent down. Was he the only one to weep?Frederick the Second won the Seven Years' War. WhoElse won it?Every page a victory.

Who cooked the feast for the victors?Every ten years a great man.Who paid the bill?So many reports.So many questions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=il2wnw5CgLISchwarzfahrer

DER SCHWARZFAHRERFare dodger (Black Rider)

Remember the Future of the Past -----------------History is always BIGGER than you think