Observation
Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke so eloquently and prophetically in his “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence" speech/sermon in 1967. One year to the day before he was assassinated.
He spoke then of the "cruel manipulation of the poor" and the "brutal solidarity [of poor people] burning the huts of a poor village" in Vietnam. Now, we can remove the name “Vietnam” and put in its place “Ukraine,” “Palestine,” “Yemen,” “Lebanon,” . . . .
What cruel manipulation it is to promote a false solidarity among poor and middle-class Americans so that Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Black Rock, . . . and their shareholders can increase their bottom lines. Manipulating by using the rhetoric of "saving democracy" or spreading wealth-producing capitalism or creating safe places for former victims of genocide while knowing their words are lies. Manipulated into the evil of supporting today’s genocide by tapping into the innate goodness of the American and British people who believe the lies they are told by their politicians and their media. Mostly good people who don’t know they’re being lied to. Being had.
What irony it is that we "celebrate" Martin Luther King, Jr. on a holiday proclaimed by the federal government, the very government that has dropped so many tons of bombs on other poor people while our poor people pay for it.
The holiday is itself a cruel irony, a hoax.
His speech was arguably the most prophetic speech ever given by an American. It was the speech that was so revealing, so troubling, so true that it caused even his peers in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference [SCLC] to distance themselves from him.
Too many of us continue that terrible tradition. We say we admire him, carefully calling him “Dr. King,” but in reality, we abandon him again. We leave him to twist in the wind by himself.
Remembrance
I remember the day King was assassinated. A friend was spending the night with me at our home in Birmingham. My mother came to my room and told us. My friend said, “he deserved it.” The following day, my father went out to the street to get the mail, and a neighbor walked up to him. “Say,” said the neighbor. “Did you hear they got the man that shot King?” Laughing, he continued, “yeah, got him for shooting coon out of season.” Upset by King’s assassination and by the shocking joke his neighbor had told, Daddy said, “that’s not funny” and walked away, back into the house.
When people say nothing has changed, they are wrong. The presenting issue—segregation and the kind of overt racial animus reflected in our neighbor’s joke—was addressed and addressed well.
Observation again
I refer to the innate goodness of people, and I believe it. If we were not innately good, we would not have gone in the space of a couple of years from Jim Crow to acceptance of interracial marriage. Yet, I am no naif. There is innate evil in us, too. The kind of evil (some call it Satanic, you may call it something else) that prompts us to defend drag queens (as we should) but does not prompt us to publicly defend victims of military alliances in cahoots with corporations. That prompts us to celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. while defying him at his most prophetic.
I’m trying for the third time to post this. 🙏🏼🤞🏼 the I in remembrance is you and the father, your father? Growing up in Oak Ridge Tennessee, we were all imported, and either the racism was shielded from me, or there wasn’t much of it. I’m thinking the latter. In Louisiana, my grandparents gave me a taste - they had a maid named Pearl, whom we adored, but grandmother was always accusing her of stealing a spoon or something which I told her was ridiculous! Nicely, of course, my grandfather would turn off the TV if Leslie Uggams came on sing along with Mitch.
I was actually in Washington DC when Dr. King was killed we were to march in the cherry blossom festival with the high school band and we were whisked back to hotel rooms to wait out the chaos. We really had no idea what was going on until afterwards and there were no cell phones.
The temperament, anger, the increasingly verbal racism in our country is discouraging frightening. Incomprehensible.
Are we told a pack of lies? For sure, at least partial truths that suit the teller. I cannot begin to imagine how those who are in war are managing. We have sent things to Help, but really don’t know if they got there and of course it would not be enough. Locally we are involved in several initiatives for the homeless and the poor, providing food, warm clothing, and this week shelter, and food for the cold cold.