Martin Luther King, Jr was radical: We must reclaim that legacy

MLK’s life has been filtered through a revisionist lens, but his radical legacy is a balm in today’s political climate.

I’ll never forget my first organising training course in 2016. We walked through scenarios about arrests, communications, treating pepper spray, and supporting our comrades. And then the instructor, a young Black Chicagoan, slowed his speech, looked at all of us solemnly, and said, “Be prepared for anything. They will drag you. They will knock you unconscious. They will do whatever they can do to keep you from speaking out. They will literally kill you.” At the time, during a critical period in the Movement for Black Lives, we were actively fighting against a system that had facilitated the killings of young Black Americans like Rekia Boyd and Quintonio LeGrier. As a collective, we were struggling to find justice for young Black people in Chicago who were facing the hyper-surveillance of the state, mass school closures, divestments in communities of colour and white supremacist violence. As we commemorate Martin Luther King, Jr Day, I can’t help but think of moments like those, when I was concerned for my mortal safety in the name of political protest. Meanwhile, recent events prove that many Americans still do not understand why protests and riots are the domains of marginalised people rather than those in the leading class.