{"id":334872,"date":"2026-01-19T10:30:56","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T15:30:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/truthout.org\/?post_type=to4_article_post&p=334872"},"modified":"2026-01-19T10:31:06","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T15:31:06","slug":"mlks-struggle-against-policing-and-surveillance-is-still-alive-in-memphis-today","status":"publish","type":"to4_article_post","link":"https:\/\/truthout.org\/articles\/mlks-struggle-against-policing-and-surveillance-is-still-alive-in-memphis-today\/","title":{"rendered":"MLK\u2019s Struggle Against Policing and Surveillance Is Still Alive in Memphis Today"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Every year on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, elected officials quote King while standing safely at a distance from the risks he embraced. His name is invoked, his image sanitized, and his politics stripped of urgency. The U.S. celebrates a softened King who spoke about love but not power, unity but not confrontation, peace but not disruption. What we rarely confront is this truth: Martin Luther King Jr. was not merely misunderstood in his time. He was actively surveilled, criminalized, and treated as a threat to the hegemonic order in the U.S.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That history is not behind us. It is unfolding again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In recent weeks, shootings involving federal agents connected to immigration enforcement and homeland security operations in Minneapolis and Portland have raised urgent questions about the expanding reach of federal policing, the militarization of law enforcement, and the dangers of unchecked surveillance powers. These incidents are not isolated<\/a>. They exist within a long arc of state authority asserting itself most aggressively where dissent, migration, and racialized resistance converge.<\/p>

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