On Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. weekend in Memphis, it's no surprise that Rev. Jesse Jackson would devote much of his speech to King. The speech we know as the "I Have A Dream" speech, Jackson declared, was really a speech about a "broken promise." The broken promise of the United States, a nation founded with the ideals of the Declaration of Independence that continually falls short of the admonition that "all men," and women, "are created equal." It was a promise so broken, Jackson pointed out, that even today, even 3,000 attendees at a conference were mostly white.

Later, in the days leading of to King's assassination in 1968, King was depressed. In hindsight, the "Civil Rights Movement" is painted as a monolith. But at the time, King saw conflicts over tactics and creeping disunity. He called leaders, Jackson recalled, to Atlanta, where he charged civil rights leaders to reunite, to work together for common goals.

Today, Jackson said, King "leaves us to choose coalition over coexistence, coalition over co-annihilation." This is perhaps unsurprising from the leader of the Rainbow Coalition, but it resonated with this group of people with diverse progressive views, if less diverse racial backgrounds.

"People with the same information end up with about the same conclusions," Jackson said, turning to the consolidation of the media. [Shameless plug: Cass Sunstein finds social scientists have experimental evidence of this.) But Jackson asked why the homogenizing forces of centralized media ("All day, all night, all white," he adds) cause journalists to only ask him about what they would call "race issues." Michael Richards. Rape accusations at Duke. Why, he asked, don't they ask him about the Iraq Study Group. He's been to Iraq, he pleaded, and he's met Saddam.

He also appealed to sports analogies ("We didn't know how good baseball could be until everybody could play," and what "if ... whites had to run seven yards for a first down because they inherited some") to keep things interesting. Overall, the speech was powerful and well-received. Jackson, in a message that resonated with Bill Moyers' talk before lunch, apparently sought to give attendees the idea that they are powerful. He said as much. And when Jackson brought the crowd to its feet and led chants, repeating "save the children" and "stop the war" among other lines, he certainly set a tone of unity, even if real unity and cooperation is still elusive.