In 2008, the then-mayor of St. Louis was invited to speak at the annual MLK celebration. He was booed so loudly that he couldn’t continue his remarks. Francis Slay, a Democrat, had done a stream of racially divisive actions while in office but the straw the broke the proverbial camel’s back was the unjustified firing of the first African American fire chief, Sherman George. We hoped that our planned action to shut the mayor down would be duplicated in other cities. After all, the boo crew’s action made national news.

January is the time of the year that Dr. King’s speech permeates the air. “I Have a Dream” is often quoted—even by the perpetrators of greed, racism and injustice. If half of us were truly carrying out the principles of Dr. King, the world wouldn’t be such a ball of confusion.

It’s 2019.

The president and his vice president had the audacity to lay a wreath at the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial on the National Mall in Washington. It was an impromptu visit and trump had the good sense not to utter Dr. King’s name. I don’t want us to leave the month of January without a serious promise to stop giving such perpetrators any opportunity to claim support or advancement of the King legacy.

Apparently Republican U.S. Sen. David Perdue was invited to speak at the King Celebration in Atlanta. WT? The trump administration had put 800,000 workers and their families in crises. What does this and all the other inhumane policies and actions by trump have to do with the commitment to the Dream.

The brilliance and complexity of Dr. King’s work is his enduring analysis of this country’s three evils: racism, war and poverty. Over five decades since his death, these three evils are alive and well and continually stoked by the likes of trump. Dreaming won’t rid us of them either.

Billions of tax dollars are spent each year in military aggression, both home and abroad. One in six Americans now lives below the poverty line. The unemployment rate for black people has been doubled that of whites since 1972. Poverty and economic injustice are twins that still dominate. The big tax cut by trump no way eased the deep suffering of poor and working people.

King had many profound insights about life in the U.S. that can still inform our quest for racial and economic justice. Because the mainstream media has us stuck on dreaming, it has taken years to uncover the nuggets of wisdom in King’s many speeches and writings that expose the barriers to peace and prosperity for all American citizens.

Regarding the attack on the public schools, Dr. King believed that “the function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically.” Many of our children going to public schools are being robbed of a true education and ultimately, their future.

The growing economic gap between the rich and poor is becoming an acceptable fact. Dr. King would have found it unconscionable believing “the curse of poverty has no justification in our age” and that the “the time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty.” To know that a CEO makes 270 times more than the average worker would sicken the King.

On police brutality and the criminal courts, Dr. King said that “law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose, they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.” He would be critical of any police department that persists in racial profiling and a prosecuting’s office which has difficulty figuring out who are the real criminals.

On war and US imperialism, Dr. King was on point when he predicted that “a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.”

Dr. King reminded us that “of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.” He would be appalled to see that the richest country in the world had 45 million uninsured citizens despite the efforts of the first Black president to provide health care for all.

If we truly honor the sacrifices of Dr. King, it’s time out for us making space or accommodating those working against the interests of humanity. Trust and believe Dr. King when he said full civil and human rights will not come at “bargain rates.”