As you should do every year, take some time today to read the entirety of the I Have A Dream speech courtesy of Martin Luther King, Jr (or watch the video if that's more your speed). It's great that our society has made as much progress as it has in terms of civil rights thanks to the likes of Dr. King but there's still a long way to go. These words from Robert F. Kennedy the day after King's murder ring as true today as when they were originally spoken.

Some look for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear: violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.

For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is the slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter.

This is the breaking of a man’s spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us all.

It may seem like just another holiday today but there's more to the remembrance of Martin Luther King, Jr. than any other day-off-work; an underlying message that's good to be reminded of early in the year so as to drive us all through the remainder of 2011.