OtherThanThat

I awoke yesterday morning as many others did – to the news of the brutal assassination (are assassinations ever not brutal?) of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.
Several years ago I made the decision to change my clock radio alarm setting from the news station to one that plays classical music. I was finding that awakening to news jarred my brain into reality a bit too cruelly. But this is the second time that the first words I heard were those of bad news. (The last time being the morning that John F. Kennedy Jr. died in a plane crash.)
In any case …

… I rose from bed and headed to my computer where a quick log-in to Seesmic revealed an amazing phenomenon.
This newly emerging video conversation community had seized this topic and already deep discussions about this devastating event and its repercussions was well underway.
Here’s a post that I did on the subject:

One of the points raised in these threads of conversation, raised by a community member named Deek Deekster, touched on the sad fact that perhaps the death of leaders is a necessary part of social evolution. He commented that just because the leader of a movement dies, oftentimes the movement goes on without them and can sometimes become even more powerful.
The example he used was Martin Luther King, Jr. Who was, of course, gunned down in the spring of 1968. His right hand man in driving the Civil Rights movement … a fellow whose name I’m embarrassed to say escapes me at the moment, not only carried on the effort but is still alive today fighting the good fight.
Deek’s example led me to search for MLK’s speech on YouTube. I felt the need for inspiration on such a dark day.
And since so often we only hear the short sound bites of this magnificent 16 minute oration, I thought that I would share that here.
So without further ado … a voice from the past, with words that continue to lead us into the future.