Protesters call attention to King’s post-1967 platform that spoke out against not only racism but to the Vietnam War and world poverty. The most recent example is the march on Wall Street that took place on April 4, highlighting the anniversary of King’s assassination. 

In 1967, King’s speech at Riverside Church in New York City focused on his growing awareness of the violence in Vietnam and the rising military draft rate of African-American poor. 

“I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government,” said King. “Before long [our troops] must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy, and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor.” 

Leslie Cagan, national director of United for Peace and Justice, organized the April 4 march in New York’s Financial District against the federal budget’s defense spending and bailouts of failing corporations. She said protesting war on the anniversary of King’s death was a way to reiterate King’s efforts to broaden his message of non-violence and brotherhood.  

“A year before Martin Luther King got shot, he linked war and extreme materialism – the triple evils of materialism, war and racism, he called them,” said Cagan. “He tried to connect the war to poverty and defense spending. I think a lot of people are also realizing that our wars today are not isolated from U.S. foreign policy over the past several decades.” 

The United for Peace and Justice advocacy coalition is composed of 1400 anti-war and civil liberty advocacy groups. Marching on April 4 and 5, they demonstrated outside government-aided corporations like American Insurance Group and Bank of America. Shouting “bail out the people, not banks,” they argued the money would be better spent funding schools, health care and unemployment welfare. America’s unemployment has a reached a 25 year high at 8.5 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

Other protests targeting diverse global issues have tried to gain public appeal by using King’s stance against war and poverty.  

In October 2004, Martin Luther King III gave a speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the Million Workers March labor rally. The rally for workers’ rights was representative of many present-day open-ended protests, also featuring protesters against the embargo on Cuba, the Iraq War, and the occupation of Palestine, among others. 

Similar to today’s broadly focused protest groups, the growing complexity of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s message alienated some people, said Clay Risen, author of A Nation on Fire: America in the Wake of the King Assassination. (Full disclosure: Risen is the cousin of this reporter.)

“King’s 1967 speech in Riverside Church in New York City was when advocacy groups started to distance themselves from him,” said Risen. “They thought his increasing radicalization on issues like Vietnam might have made him politically toxic.”  

Tony Gittens, who was a student newspaper editor at Howard University when King was assassinated in 1968, said that taking a stand against injustice is the purpose of any protest, no matter how many issues are involved.  

“Protesters always develop their worldview and their ideas, and in protesting they’ll learn how they can better stand against the injustices they see,” said Gittens, founder of the Black Film Institute at the University of the District of Columbia. “After King’s assassination, more of us at Howard were wondering how we could get involved. There’s disagreement among protesters in how to do this, but the goal for these groups is not to let it turn them against each other.” 

Some groups, like World Can’t Wait, feel betrayed that President Obama is not going far enough on their issues like ending war and wiretapping. Gittens said such political disagreements inevitably fracture advocacy groups.  

“Deciding to elect Obama wasn’t an easy conversation for these groups to have, but they thought, ‘we need to win’,” said Gittens. “I think the situation is so dire and Obama’s popularity is so strong that they are going to put that disagreement aside – for a while.”