On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial 57 years ago Friday, Martin Luther King Jr. famously gave his “I Have a Dream” speech. Seeking to exploit and co-opt that momentous event in the history of the civil rights movement, the infamous race hustler Al Sharpton, along with members of his leftist National Action Network, organized a rally of Marxist Black Lives Matter activists entitled, “Commitment March: Get Your Knee Off Our Necks.”

“We don’t just want this to be a summer of discontent,” Sharpton explained. “We want to do as they did 57 years ago, to come to the national government and say we need legislation.” The legislation Sharpton references is the Democrats’ George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which removes protections from police officers, making it easier for them to be prosecuted. Sharpton and the rest also want an update to the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which the Left says the Supreme Court “gutted” in 2013.

The great irony here is that extortionists like Sharpton and fellow race hustler Jesse Jackson, with their cottage industry aimed at stirring a culture of racial grievance and animosity, have done more to prevent King’s dream from being realized than any white supremacist. And rather than calling out the violence of the BLM rioting, Sharpton has only stirred the pot.

Weeks ago, speaking at George Floyd’s funeral, Sharpton continued preaching his racial-grievance gospel: “When I stood at that spot, the reason it got to me is that George Floyd’s story has been the story of black folks. Because ever since 401 years ago, the reason we could never be who we wanted and dreamed of being is you kept your knee on our neck. What happened to Floyd happens every day in this country — in education, in health services, and in every area of American life.” No, it doesn’t.

Meanwhile, in the Democrat-run urban poverty plantations across the nation, black people suffer high crime and murder rates, mostly at the hands of other black people. The only ones kneeling on their necks are race hustlers like Sharpton, who have convinced them they don’t actually have the same freedoms shared by all American citizens. They’re the ones who turned King’s dream into a nightmare.