Dream remains alive

FIFTY long years ago, Martin Luther King Jr was shot dead. On April 4, 1968, this high-achieving son of an American Baptist minister, a man as humanly flawed as all of us, was assassinated at the apex of his life, not yet 40 years old, in the prime of his potency.

But his message lives on, perhaps more pertinent today than at any time of his life.

He gave many memorable addresses but one speech he made, in 1963 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington before 250,000 civil rights supporters, sums up his message.

“I have a dream,” he pronounced, with a sonorous intonation as musical as commanding and resolute. “That one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.”

With black America at a flashpoint due to racial tension and a long and bloody history of manacles and oppression, these words were immensely powerful.

King was not just saying that we are created equal, a bold statement in the explosive days in which he made it, but that this belief is a tenet of the American creed as conceived by the nation’s forefathers.

It was no coincidence he made this speech in the symbolic shadow of Abraham Lincoln, the 16th American president who had helped abolish slavery and who had also been assassinated.

But as formidable and political as these words were, King then distilled their sentiment to the most basic, personable, human, family values.

“I have a dream,” he went on. “That my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.”

And that “little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers”.

Then with an anthemic sweep of logic he said he yearns for the day when “black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last”.

The sniper who assassinated King was not the first to try to kill him.

Years before, a person King described as a “demented black woman” stabbed him while he was signing autographs. The knife went in his chest, its blade on the edge of his heart’s main artery.

Millimetres from death, he survived after being hospitalised.

The next morning The New York Times said King was so close to death that had he sneezed it would have been the end of him.

King received a letter from a young girl in the days after the stabbing.

“Dear Mr King,” the letter said. “I am a ninth-grade student at White Plains High School. While it should not matter, I would like to mention that I am a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune, and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I’m simply writing to you to say that I am so happy that you didn’t sneeze.”

There is no more dangerous message in this world than peace, love,

has confirmed up to 87 million people, including 311,000 Australians, were affected by Cambridge Analytica’s data harvesting.

Previously, Cambridge Analytica chief executive Alexander Nix, who has since been suspended from his job, had said he had access to 30 million people, while Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie reckoned it was closer to 50 million.

Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg says the company is investigating what other third parties have had access to your data, and he will appear before US Congress next week to explain.

Facebook this week announced it would be more transparent about why and who is using your data, including through Instagram and Messenger. It admits scanning the images and information you send on Messenger and using data gleaned from your Instagram activity.

There remains a discrepancy between what Facebook says users have given permission for and what users believe they have surrendered.

In Europe, more stringent data privacy regulation is coming in on May 25.

Privacy crackdowns are likely to spread as Facebook and its executives face a suite of lawsuits from users and investors.

In one US case, the Missouri attorney-general has asked Facebook to disclose every time it shared information with a political party, campaign or action committee and how much they paid Facebook for the data, including the 2016 Trump and 2012 Obama campaigns.

Australia’s Privacy Commissioner should ask similar questions of this nation’s state and federal elections in its own Facebook investigation.

There is no more dangerous message in this world than peace, love, compassion, empathy, equality and freedom.