Let’s talk about Martin Luther King Jr. Let’s not talk about him just because it’s his holiday. Let’s not talk about him just because we feel like good people for doing so. Let’s talk about him because his message is entirely relevant today.

I’m actually not referring to issues of race, as I’m going to assume that I don’t have many segregationists reading my blog. That’s not to say that we’ve come close to solving racial inequality, but that the problem is so much bigger than that. Race isn’t real, it’s a social construct, a concept that’s used to divide us when what the people really need is unity.

It wasn’t until recently that I learned that King was about so much more than race. In school, I think they boil it down to racial equality because it’s easier to swallow. That’s no different than how they teach us the Civil War was all about slavery, when it was just one of many of the motivations, and not even one of the top ones.

In addition to Civil Rights, King preached:

• non-violence even when faced with violent opposition
• refusing to align with a political party in order to remain critical
• opposing war
• engaging in civil disobedience
• questioning capitalism
• helping people have access to jobs, homes, and health care

It’s striking to me that so many of King’s speeches and words could be delivered unaltered today. He was sharing the message of Occupy Wall Street decades before the rest of us. Sometimes I waiver in my own participation in the movement, wondering if it’s all futile, but when I see a man as great as MLK espousing the same ideas, I’m swayed back with his quotes like: “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

A lot of people assume that now that we have a black president, the work of King is complete (never mind that he’s as much a corporate puppet as anyone), but that’s absolutely not the case. The work of Dr. King has barely just begun. We as a society have so much more to accomplish.

So get involved, get informed, and get civilly disobedient. Change doesn’t result from those who quietly dissent. I’m charging all of you who agree with many of the tenants of the Occupy movement yet find various excuses not to participate to take a bigger leap. In the words of MLK, “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”