Thousands of people began descending on Washington, DC early Sunday to dedicate a memorial for slain civil rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr, weeks after the original ceremony was canceled by a hurricane. President Barack Obama is to lead the event, with tens of thousands expected at the National Mall to honor the man whose “I Have a Dream” speech helped galvanize a movement in the 1960s. US civil rights leader Reverend Jesse Jackson, who was a friend and colleague of King's, on Sunday called him a “living force” even today, decades after his death, with poverty and privation still rampant in the United States. “I see him as a living force and the day when I think about more wars, more concentrations of wealth, more poverty and then more rebellion, Dr King would be in the middle of the struggle today,” Jackson told CNN television shortly before the start of the dedication. “A great society — 44 million Americans are on food stamps. And 48 million in poverty. And 52 million Americans unsecure,” Jackson continued. “Dr King would make a case for we must measure our character by the way we treat those on the hull of the ship, not just those on the deck of the ship.”
