We can still learn something today from Martin Luther King Jr.’s life and work.

This Monday, America observed Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The great man said about two years before his death:

I choose to identify with the underprivileged. I choose to identify with the poor. I choose to give my life for the hungry. I choose to give my life for those who have been left out of the sunlight of opportunity. I choose to live for and with those who find themselves seeing life as a long and desolate corridor with no exit sign. This is the way I am going. If it means suffering a little bit, I'm going that way. If it means sacrificing, I'm going that way. If it means dying for them, I'm going that way because I heard a voice saying, “Do something for others.”

It is difficult to overstate what Dr. King and the American civil rights movement achieved for America and the world. In the face of enormous obstacles, they changed thinking in the direction of human equality and democracy for all. King was called “the American Gandhi” for their shared philosophy of non-violent protest and struggle.

Dr. King formed and was shaped by the civil rights movement. He went from seeking more courteous treatment for African Americans on Montgomery city buses, to struggling for the abolition of the entire “Jim Crow” system, to advocating changing America and the world on behalf of the most neglected peoples everywhere.

It's easy today to forget what the civil rights movement accomplished. Its achievements include: * Abolishing the “Jim Crow” system. * Ending legal segregation in America. * Restoring voting rights to black Americans in the South, which were mostly removed after 1876. * A large drop in white on black violence. * A major increase in educational and work opportunities for African-Americans. * Its major impact on the state of human dignity on all continents.

The catalyst for much of this was Rosa Parks, who in 1955 refused to give up her bus seat to a white man as required by a city ordinance. Dr. King, then newly arrived as a pastor in the city, spoke up for her as ''one of the finest citizens in Montgomery'' and reminded Americans with unsurpassed oratory that their highest court had recently declared that state-mandated school segregation was unconstitutional.

President Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act into law almost a decade later, the same year that Dr. King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In his acceptance speech, he referred to Nelson Mandela and others then imprisoned in South Africa’s jails.

What lessons can Canadians and others today take from King’s life and work? Let me suggest two.

First, no advocate for a human dignity initiative should allow him or herself to be sidelined by local, national, or international apologists for the status quo. If anyone had good reasons to give up, it was King. For more than five years after Montgomery he had to abandon an effective civil rights role. But when circumstances changed, he was willing and prepared to continue. Regroup, rethink, restart, but don’t succumb to indifference. Keep in mind King’s famous thought in his letter from the Birmingham jail: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Get going locally, provincially, nationally, or internationally if required.

Second, anyone in the advocacy communities should, like King, always seek to mobilize like-minded groups and individuals to join their cause. Coalitions and networks are often the key to success. The world coalition fighting climate change might not have achieved everything it sought at Copenhagen, but there is no doubt that working for a common cause was effective.

As others have said, Dr. King's spirit was, and remains, universal, embracing all races and peoples and crossing all national boundaries.