On this Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, the nation pays tribute while violence continues its work without interruption. We speak of King as though he were settled history rather than an unresolved indictment.

His name is invoked to reassure rather than to unsettle, to signal moral inheritance rather than moral obligation. What is remembered is the comfort of his words, rather than the pressure of his demands. Memory is not a resting place, and it is supposed to be used and engaged in the present. History makes clear that power, when left undisturbed, does not soften. It refines itself. It learns how to apologize without yielding. It learns how to survive exposure.

America has always been a nation fluent in violence. It was founded through a revolution that sanctified force as the origin story. What changes is not the violence itself, but its framing. Who is permitted to wield it. Who is expected to endure it. And how quickly the country learns to watch without intervening. In Minneapolis, that fluency is visible.

George Floyd was killed in 2020 by a police officer in daylight, on a public street, beneath the knee of the state, while strangers pleaded for his breath. The killing was captured, circulated, slowed, paused, replayed and absorbed into the national bloodstream. Many believed that this visibility marked a turning point. That witnessing would force change. That seeing would be enough. It was not.

The cameras did not interrupt the killing. They documented it. The footage did not stop the system. It fed it. Circulation replaced........

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