POP CHAIRMAN LAWRENCE HAMM TO VISIT SITE OF KING SHOOTING ON ANNIVERSARY OF HIS ASSASSINATION

People’s Organization For Progress chairman Lawrence Hamm will visit the site where Dr Martin Luther King Jr was shot and killed on the anniversary of his assassination.

Hamm will be flying to Memphis, Tennessee tomorrow to participate in a commemoration of the life of the slain civil rights leader that will take place at the National Civil Rights Museum.

The museum is located at the former Lorraine Motel where King was shot and killed. Tomorrow will mark the 58th anniversary of his assassination.

Dr King was assassinated on April 4, 1968 in Memphis. He was shot after 6:00pm while standing on the balcony outside his room at the Lorraine Motel. King was pronounced dead at 7:05pmat St Joseph Hospital.

“The People’s Organization For Progress is sending me to the King commemoration taking place at the site of his assassination to demonstrate our ongoing commitment to the goals and ideals for which he stood,” Hamm stated.

“This visit is especially important at this time since everything that Dr King fought for including racial equality, economic justice, civil rights, voting rights, human rights, and peace are under attack from President Trump, the MAGA Republican Congress, and the ultra right wing super majority on the Supreme Court,” he said.

“The Trump Administration is trying to destroy the last vestiges of everything Dr King and the Civil Rights Movement fought for and achieved,” he said.

At the time of his death King was in Memphis to lend his support to the city’s striking sanitation workers who were trying to organize a union and negotiate for higher wages and safer working conditions.

He was also planning a Poor People’s March that was to take place during June of that year in Washington DC.

“We believe that King was assassinated because he was trying to build a movement to end poverty, racial and economic inequality, and the war in Vietnam,” Hamm said.

“He was expanding the scope of his movement from civil rights to human rights. And he became increasingly critical of the capitalist economic system,” he said.

“Dr King called for a redistribution of power and wealth in this country and the transformation of our socioeconomic system. This is no secret. It’s in his speeches, his writings, and his books,” he said.

“He was seen as a threat to the system by many of those in power. I believe that’s why they killed him,” he said.

“Dr King his gone but his struggle continues. The best way to honor him is for those of us who are here to continue his fight for justice,” Hamm said.

The People’s Organization For Progress has celebrated King’s birthday and commemorated the anniversary of his assassination since the organization was founded in 1982.