Obama uses King speech to attack obstructionism

WASHINGTON—US President Barack Obama dedicated the new Martin Luther King memorial on the National Mall on Sunday, using the occasion to attack Republican obstructionism as he girds for a bruising 2012 reelection battle.

America’s first black president paid tribute to the giants of the civil rights movement as well as its foot-soldiers, saying the gleaming granite memorial in the heart of the capital was for one and all.

“In this place, he will stand for all time, among monuments to those who fathered this nation and those who defended it,” Obama said.

“A black preacher with no official rank or title who somehow gave voice to our deepest dreams and our most lasting ideals, a man who stirred our conscience and thereby helped make our union more perfect.”

Much of Obama’s speech was then political as he tied King’s struggle to his own effort to drag America out of recession, punctuating the 20-minute address with thinly-veiled attacks on his Republican opponents.

“As was true 50 years ago, as has been true throughout human history, those with power and privilege will often decry any call for change as ‘divisive.’ They’ll say any challenge to the existing arrangements are unwise and destabilizing.”

With the anti-corporate message of the Occupy Wall Street movement resonating in an America struggling to emerge from recession with 9.1 percent unemployment, Obama said King would not have typecast all bankers.

“If he were alive today, I believe he would remind us that the unemployed worker can rightly challenge the excesses of Wall Street without demonizing all who work there.”

The president wore the mantle of King’s heir “at a moment of great challenge and great change,” and, in a nod to supporters ahead of the November 2012 presidential election, pleaded for patience and promised change would come.

“As tough as times may be, I know we will overcome,” he declared, standing under the monument to the civil rights icon. “I know there are better days ahead. I know this because of the man towering over us.”

After the address, Obama held hands with wife Michelle and Vice President Joe Biden to sing the civil rights anthem “We Shall Overcome,” swaying with a crowd of thousands in front of the sun-drenched memorial.

The event had the atmosphere of a political rally as speaker after speaker linked King’s memory to today’s intractable politics, many of them attacking the Republicans for stalling Obama’s jobs agenda.

Tens of thousands of predominantly African-Americans descended on Washington for the dedication ceremony to honor the man whose “I Have a Dream” speech helped galvanize a movement in the 1960s.

US civil rights leader Reverend Jesse Jackson, who was a King friend and colleague, attacked Republican tactics, saying: “Many seem willing just to sink the ship just to destroy the captain. We must do better than that.”

The icon’s son, Martin Luther King III, called for an end of “conservative policies that exclude people” and praised the Occupy Wall Street movement, saying: “We must stand up for economic justice.”

Reverend Al Sharpton, a leading civil rights activist, headed a march to the monument on Saturday to draw attention to the country’s economic woes and attack the gridlock in Congress over Obama’s jobs bill.

Hurricane Irene’s passage through the eastern United States had prompted the postponement of the ceremony on August 28, which was the 48th anniversary of the “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington.

The King monument, the only one on the Washington Mall not dedicated to a US president or to war, had already been open to the public for weeks.

Dedicated to the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize laureate and his message of non-violence, hope and justice, the memorial has been installed on a vast open space of four acres (1.5 hectares) dotted with cherry trees donated by Japan.

Nearby is the Lincoln Memorial from where the pastor gave his most famous speech on August 28, 1963.

That was five years before his assassination by James Earl Ray in Memphis, Tennessee at the age of just 39.

A massive, 28-foot (nearly nine-meter) “Stone of Hope” statue in the likeness of King, carved out of white granite by renowned Chinese sculptor Lei Yixin, shows him gazing sternly out onto the horizon, arms folded.

Visitors enter through the Mountain of Despair, a huge boulder symbolizing the African-American struggle for peace and equality.