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MartinLutherKingWasMoreThanADreamer
By Ahmed Sule, CFA [email protected]
@Alatenumo
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MartinLutherKingWasMoreThanADreamer
By Ahmed Sule, CFA [email protected]
@Alatenumo
Today 18 January 2016 is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, a day set
aside to mark the birthday of Civil Rights activist Dr. Martin
Luther King. Usually, a number of Americans spend the day giving up
their time to participate as volunteers in various activities,
while some educational institutions teach children about the works
of King. Even though King died nearly fifty years ago, his
influence is still felt today. During his time on earth, King
challenged the status quo as he fought against what he called the
evil triplet of racism, economic exploitation and militarism. King
spent the first part of his ministry tackling the first evil of
racism, but later on he addressed the two other evils of economic
exploitation and militarism. Unfortunately, Martin Luther Kings
legacy has been simplified into a thirty-five word sound bite, I
have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a
nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but
by the content of their character. In short, he is remembered as a
dreamer rather than a revolutionary. In todays world, he has been
stripped of his radicalism and has been embraced by the mainstream.
In the words of Cornel West, Martin Luther King has been sanitized,
sterilized, deodorized and Santaclausified. Just like how Christmas
has been commercialized and stripped of its true meaning and power,
King has been stripped of his true meaning and power. Infact some
have attempted to use his words as a means to justify the very
things that King spent his life fighting against. For instance,
shortly before his election as British Prime Minister, David
Cameron in promoting his proposed economic policies quoted King by
saying, You will see that far from playing it safe, the
Conservative Party has a radical agenda for returning power and
responsibility to people. It will mean massive change in the way we
run this country, how we live our lives, and what we expect from
government and each other. In the words of Martin Luther King,
"when you're right, you can't be too radical." However, since
coming into power, Camerons government has embarked on what has
been described as the greatest assault against the poor in Britain
since the introduction of the Poor Laws in 1834. Agitators against
affirmative action in the USA often quote King in justifying the
abolition of affirmative action while some racists hiding behind
the cloak of colorblindness use King as an excuse to maintain the
status quo. To get a complete picture of Martin Luther King, we
have to look beyond the words of his I have A Dream Speech and
examine his more uncomfortable and uncompromising words such as
those expressed in his Beyond Vietnam speech. It is these
uncomfortable words that earned him a rebuke from the New York
Times for what they described as his Recklessly comparing American
military methods to those of the Nazis. These uncompromising words
led the Washington Post to declare that King had, Diminished his
usefulness to his cause, to his country and to his people. His
uncomfortable words led to 73% of Americans disagreeing with his
opposition to the Vietnam War. Kings uncomfortable words are still
relevant in todays world where the gap between the 1% and the 99%
is ever widening; it is relevant in todays world which has turned
its back on refugees clinging to deflated dinghies on the
Mediterranean Sea; it is relevant in todays world where the
military and prison industrial complexes gulp up funds which should
have been available to cater for the least, the last and littlest;
it is relevant in todays world where black bodies are left beaten,
bloodied and brutalized on lifes Jericho Road. The next couple of
paragraphs, contains some of Kings uncomfortable and uncompromising
words which I have categorized under the three evil triplet
categories of racism, poverty and militarism.
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Martin Luther King On Racism America has been, and she continues
to be, largely a racist society. Maybe something is wrong with our
economic system the way its presently going There comes a time when
any system must be reevaluated. Somewhere along the way someone has
forgotten that demonstrations have been sacred when they were
engaged in by white Americans. They always become wrong and
ill-timed when they are engaged in by the Negro. Riots are caused
by nice, gentle, timid white moderates who are more concerned about
order than justice, and by a national administration more concerned
about winning the war in Vietnam than the war against poverty right
here at home. Large segments of white society are more concerned
about the tranquility and the status quo than about justice and
humanity. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the
Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not
the White Citizen's Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white
moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who
prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a
positive peace which is the presence of justice. Like a boil that
can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened
with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light,
injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure
creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national
opinion before it can be cured. I suppose I should have realized
that few members of the oppressor race can understand the deep
groans and passionate yearnings of the oppressed race, and still
fewer have the vision to see that injustice must be rooted out by
strong, persistent and determined action. To cure injustices, you
must expose them before the light of human conscience and the bar
of public opinion, regardless of whatever tensions that exposure
generates. Injustices to the Negro must be brought out into the
open where they cannot be evaded. Weve got to find a method that
will disrupt our cities if necessary, create the crisis that will
force the nation to look at the situation, dramatize it, and yet at
the same time not destroy life or property. I see that as massive
civil disobedience. Martin Luther King On Economic Injustice The
purpose of the slum, is to confine those who have no power and
perpetuate their powerlessness. The slum is little more than a
domestic colony which leaves its inhabitants dominated politically,
exploited economically, and segregated and humiliated at every
turn. When an affluent society would coax us to believe that
happiness consists in the size of our automobiles, the
impressiveness of our houses, and the expensiveness of our clothes,
Jesus reminds us, A mans life consisteth not in the abundance of
the things which he possesseth. 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 Im going. We
are saying that something is wrong ... with capitalism.... There
must be better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move
toward a democratic socialism. Call it what you may, call it
democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a
better distribution of wealth within this country for all of God's
children.
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One day we must ask the question, "Why are there forty million
poor people in America?" ... When you ask that question, you begin
to question the capitalistic economy. To raise protest to an
appropriate level for cities, to invest it with aggressive but
nonviolent qualities, it is necessary to adopt civil disobedience.
To dislocate the functioning of a city, without destroying it, can
be more effective than a riot because it can be longer lasting,
costly to the society, but not wantonly destructive We ought to
come in mule carts, in old trucks, any kind of transportation
people can get their hands on. People ought to come to Washington,
sit down if necessary in the middle of the street and say, We are
here; we are poor; we dont have any money; you have made us this
way; you keep us down this way; and weve come to stay until you do
something about it. I understand that you have an economic system
in America known as Capitalism. Through this economic system you
have been able to do wonders. You have become the richest nation in
the world, and you have built up the greatest system of production
that history has ever known. All of this is marvelous. But
Americans, there is the danger that you will misuse your
Capitalism. I still contend that money can be the root of all evil.
It can cause one to live a life of gross materialism. I am now
convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most
revolutionarythe solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a
now rather widely discussed measurethe guaranteed annual income.
Our emphasis should shift from exclusive attention to putting
people to work over to enabling people to consume. Martin Luther
King On Militarism I knew that I could never again raise my voice
against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having
first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the
world today: my own governments A nation that continues year after
year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of
social uplift is approaching spiritual death. A true revolution of
values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, This way of
settling differences is not just. This business of burning human
beings with napalm, of filling our nations homes with orphans and
widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of
peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody
battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged,
cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. We must
rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a
person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit
motives and property rights, are considered more important than
people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and
militarism are incapable of being conquered. A nation that will
keep people in slavery for 244 years will "thingify" them and make
them things. And therefore, they will exploit them and poor people
generally economically. And a nation that will exploit economically
will have to have foreign investments and everything else, and it
will have to use its military might to protect them. All of these
problems are tied together. So let us reclaim Martin Luther King
for who he really was and not relegate him to a 35-word sound bite.
Happy Martin Luther King Day 18 January 2016 @Alatenumo
