From Selma To Chicago: How Grievance Politics Is Hijacking MLKs Legacy

That bridge, stained with the blood of civil rights foot soldiers, stands as a solemn testament to the unyielding courage of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and those who marched beside him for dignity, equality and justice.

As reported by Fox News, that legacy now collides with a sobering question as Martin Luther King Jr. Day arrives: What would Dr. King think if he could see Chicagos South Side today? The answer is not found in nostalgic rhetoric, but in the harsh reality of streets where the promise of the civil rights era has been traded for chaos, dependency and decay.

The South Side is not a relic of the past; it is a present-day living crisis that exposes the failure of progressive governance and empty activism. Gunfire echoes through neighborhoods where children should be playing in the streets, and poverty is visible everywhere in littered sidewalks, broken windows and abandoned buildings that testify to decades of neglect. Schools pass on failing kids rather than equipping them, and families are torn apart not by white supremacy, but by the poison of neglect, fatherlessness and a culture that embraces dependency over free will.

Dr. King dreamed of a beloved community where character, not color, defined us, and he spoke often of the Promised Land, words that framed his final speech before he was assassinated. He marched for opportunity, not handouts, and he spent a great deal of time in Chicago during the 1960s, confronting injustice while calling people to responsibility and moral courage. If he walked these streets now, I believe he would weep not only at the violence and deprivation, but at how we have squandered his legacy in the name of politics and performative outrage.

He would see a Black Lives Matter movement that exploded onto the scene in 2020 and reaped billions of dollars in donations what one of its founders brazenly called "white guilt money." Corporations and celebrities poured in fortunes, virtue-signaling their way to absolution while insulating themselves from the consequences of the policies they champion. Yet where did that money go, and what lasting good did it accomplish for the people most in need of hope and opportunity?

Not to the South Sides crumbling schools or job-training programs that could have broken generational cycles of poverty. Not to mentoring programs for at-risk youth or safe havens from the streets that might have saved lives and restored families. Instead, it lined the pockets of a few funding mansions in upscale neighborhoods while the Black underclass continues to tread at the bottom, trapped in the same despair that activists claim to oppose.

I know this firsthand, not as an outside critic but as a pastor who has dedicated his life to uplifting his community through Project H.O.O.D. Helping Others Obtain Destiny. I have seen zero dollars from those windfalls, even as we labor daily to offer real alternatives to violence and dependency. We are in the process of building our Leadership and Economic Opportunity Center, the first new building in my neighborhood in more than 50 years, a symbol of renewal in a place long written off by politicians and professional activists.

We provide job training and fight daily battles against despair without a dime from the grievance industry that thrives on keeping people angry but unchanged. Thats what it is, folks: an industry, a machine that profits off pain, peddling slogans and outrage while ignoring real solutions solutions that are often simple but require hard work and perseverance. Dr. King didnt march for performative activism or luxury homes bought on the backs of the suffering; he marched for self-reliance, family, faith and the American promise that hard work could lift anyone.

So what would King say about this moment, about a movement that enriches elites while leaving the streets unchanged? He would call it a betrayal, a distortion of his message and mission. He would remind us that true progress is measured in transformed lives, not in hashtags, corporate statements or political speeches.

He would decry the lowered expectations imposed on Black communities the insidious notion that we are perpetual victims, excused from accountability and shielded from standards that apply to everyone else. "No, Dr. King didnt die so that America could lower its expectations of Black communities." "He died so we could rise to the highest expectations the same standards to which all Americans are held."

The South Side doesnt need another slogan or more empty politics that promise change while entrenching dependency. It needs one thing above all else: development, rooted in faith, family and freedom rather than bureaucracy and ideological experiments. It needs the development of its youth into strong citizens with the ability to seize opportunity, not simply demand redistribution.

It needs development that teaches people how to live and thrive in freedom, embracing responsibility, discipline and moral order as the path to genuine liberation. Most of all, it needs the restoration of good faith to reverse more than 60 years of bad faith that has destroyed too many communities through failed policies and broken promises.

Martin Luther King Jr. may be long gone, but his vision of the Promised Land a land of opportunity for all remains within reach, and we must seek it or perish.