Beyond Dreaming

On Monday–Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday–people from Minneapolis and St. Paul braved sub-zero temperatures to come together to continue Dr. King’s unfinished work.

Mel Reeves, organizer with the Coalition for Justice 4 Jamar and longtime activist, helps lead the Minneapolis side of the march.

In the spirit of the holiday, marchers demanded solutions to the ongoing problem of police brutality against people of color. They called for St. Paul authorities to reopen the case of Marcus Golden, who St. Paul police fatally shot in the back of the head last year. The cops changed their stories multiple times following the incident and ultimately faced no charges.

They also called for charges against the officers who shot Jamar Clark last year in Minneapolis rather than a grand jury. No grand jury has ever indicted a cop in Minnesota.

Minneapolis and St. Paul marchers gather between the two cities on the Lake Street-Marshall Avenue bridge. Note the breath clouds. Minnesotans are hardcore.

The Twin Cities Coalition for Justice 4 Jamar, which helped organize the march, is calling on everyone (yes, you too!) to call Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman’s office to voice support for the second demand. His number is 612-348-2146

Sample message: “My name is ___________, (I am a resident of Hennepin County), and I want justice for Jamar Clark, who was killed by Minneapolis police. This means no grand jury. I want Officers Mark Ringgenberg and Dustin Schwarze to be brought to trial, just like anyone else would be if they killed someone.”

You can also email Freeman’s office at citizeninfo@hennepin.us

Protesters warm up inside the French Hen in St. Paul after the march.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day is a great opportunity to reflect on the histories that continue to shape today’s injustices. Unfortunately, it’s more widely used to uncritically celebrate racial “progress” in America. In the [words of comedian Hari Kondabolu], “When did Martin Luther King get transformed from revolutionary civil rights leader that the FBI feared into a teddy bear that only says ‘I Have A Dream’ when you pull the string?”


Dr. King’s legacy is far deeper than the pithy quotes and dream-having that get paraded around once a year. I want to share [just one piece of it]. Skip to 1:30 for the most relevant part.

I couldn’t find a transcript for this speech anywhere online, so I did my best with the audio:

“Negroes are denied the right to vote. But not only that. This denial of the right to vote, the glaring denial of civil rights in other areas, is blocked (?) so often by the tragic abuse of police power. We’ve known the long knife of police brutality. We’ve known the shared (?) Jim Clarks of the south. We’ve known the Colonel Al Lingos of the South. They have beat us. They have bloodied our heads. They’ve used billy clubs and horses and teargas and vicious dogs to block our advance. All of these designs have been used to reduce us to a level of nobody. We are tired of this now. We must let it be known all over the world that we will not take it any longer. Now they have been slow to do anything about it. They have been slow even through the federal government, they always find ways to get over to you that it can’t be done. Still strange to us though. How millions of dollars can be spent every day to hold troops in South Vietnam and our country cannot protect the rights of negroes in Selma, Alabama. So we have no alternative but to keep going. The other thing is the denial of first amendment privileges laid down in our constitution. We read these words: ‘The right of people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances shall not be abridged.’ But Alabama doesn’t believe in that right. Alabama is determined to make the first amendment of the constitution merely something written on thin paper never transformed into thick action. We have a job to do. We have a great, divine imperative facing us today. We must let the nation know and we must let the world know that it is necessary to protest this threefold evil. The problem of the denial of the right to vote, the police brutality, that we continue to face and faced in its most vicious form last Sunday.”


“Still strange to us though. How millions of dollars can be spent every day to hold troops in South Vietnam and our country cannot protect the rights of negroes in Selma, Alabama.”

Still strange to us though. How billions of dollars can be spent every day to wage illegal drone war globally and our country cannot protect the rights of people of color in Detroit, Michigan. Ferguson, Missouri. Minneapolis, Minnesota.

“We are tired of this now. We must let it be known all over the world that we will not take it any longer.”

We are still tired. We must let it be known all over the world that this has been going on, and on, and on, and on. And we will not take it any longer.

“We have no alternative but to keep going.”

We have no alternative but to keep going.

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