Martin Luther King, Jr. is not a legend because he believed in diversity trainings and civic ceremonies. He is remembered because he took serious risks and, as the Quakers say, spoke truth to power. He is also remembered because, among a number of brave and committed civil rights leaders and activists, he had a flair for self-promotion, a style that also appealed to white liberals, and the extraordinary social strength of the black southern churches behind him. And because he died before he had a chance to be widely believed a relic or buffoon.

What little history TV gives us this week is at least as much about forgetting as about remembering. We hear "I have a dream"; we don't hear his powerful indictments of poverty, the Vietnam War, and the military-industrial complex. We see Bull Connor in Birmingham; we don't see arrests for fighting segregated housing in Chicago, or the generations of beatings and busts before he got famous. We don't hear about the mainstream contempt at the time for King, his reputation among conservatives as a Commie dupe. We don't see retrospectives on his linkage of civil rights with Third World liberation. We forget that he died in Memphis lending support for a garbage workers' strike, while organizing a multi-racial Poor Peoples' Campaign that pushed affordable housing and decent-paying jobs as basic civil rights transcending skin color. We forget that many of King's fellow leaders weren't nearly so polite. Cities were burning: Watts, Detroit, Newark.

But the bigger problem is that King has become an icon, not a historical figure (distorted or otherwise). The racism he challenged four decades ago in Georgia was also dominant here, but few white Seattleites today are familiar with our history: the housing and school segregation, laws barring Asians from owning land. the marches downtown from Garfield High School, police harassment of both radical and mainstream black activists. We don't know the stories of the people, many still with us, who led those struggles in Seattle. And we rarely acknowledge that the overt racism of Montgomery 1955 is no longer so overt, but still part of Seattle 2000; it shows up in Seattle's geography, in its jails, and yes, in its very earnest and extremely white leftie activist groups.

If Seattle were serious about his legacy, Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. would run through Belltown or Ballard, not the CD and Rainier Valley. Literally, in just about every big city in the U.S., urban planners and city councils put King back in the ghetto, along with both the legions of people who worked with him and the many more who've taken up his work since.

Which brings me to the campaign by Larry Gossett and others to put King's figure in the King County symbol. Martin Luther King, Jr. County is, depending on your view, either a noble gesture, taking advantage of a coincidence in name with a long-forgotten Vice President; or it's an open joke, a pitiful gesture by white liberals to avoid taking responsibility for the serious racial breaches in economic and social mobility in Seattle. Funny, but even with Norm Rice, Ron Sims, and Gary Locke in our midst we've still got those breaches. And how is it that we've got this campaign in a year in which the county is cutting back social services?

Adopting King's logo for the official design of Martin Luther King, Jr. County would be a unique and appropriate honor; but his legacy deserves far more. It deserves that we honor what he actually did, in inspiring and bringing out the best in people, and that we make his vision a priority as we work to elevate everyone in this age of uneven prosperity. Action, not gestures, is the best way to celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dr. King, nonviolent martyr to reconciliation and justice, has become a Hallmark Card, a warm, fuzzy, feelgood invocation of neighborliness, a file photo for sneaker or sodacommercials, a reprieve for post-holiday shoppers, an excuse for a three-day weekend, Be sure to check out the Three-Day-Only White Sale at The Bon.

He deserves better. We all do.