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What Martin Luther King, Jr. Said About Change
By David Swanson
Created Jan 16 2008 - 9:34am
These are some of the words of Martin Luther King Jr.:
"The nonviolent strategy has been to dramatize the evils of our society in
such a way that pressure is brought to bear against those evils by the
forces of good will in the community and change is produced. The student
sit-ins of 1960 are a classic illustration of this method....
"So far we have had the Constitution backing most of the demands for
change, and this has made our work easier, since we could be sure that the
federal courts would usually back up our demonstrations legally. Now we are
approaching areas where the voice of the Constitution is not clear. We have
left the realm of constitutional rights and we are entering the area of
human rights.
"The Constitution assured the right to vote, but there is no such
assurance of the right to adequate housing, or the right to an adequate
income....
"The past three years have demonstrated the power of a committed, morally
sound minority to lead the nation.... Even the presence of a vital peace
movement and the campus protest against the war in Vietnam can be traced
back to the nonviolent action movement led by the Negro."
King was decidedly pro-change. But these are some more of his words:
"The white establishment is skilled in flattering and cultivating emerging
leaders. It presses its own image on them and finally, from imitation of
manners, dress, and style of living, a deeper strain of corruption develops.
This kind of Negro leader acquires the white man's contempt for the ordinary
Negro. He is often more at home with the middle-class white than he is among
his own people. His language changes, his location changes, his income
changes, and ultimately he changes from the representative of the Negro to
the white man into the white man's representative to the Negro. The tragedy
is that too often he does not recognize what has happened to him."
Yes, this is right-wing corporate-media color-blind hero, Martin Luther King
Jr. speaking about the white man and the Negro people. He was speaking about
what was, and what largely still is, not about what he dreamed might someday
be.
He was for change, but not for electing just anyone who said the word, and
not for letting pass the uncomfortable but necessary warning.
"A time comes," King said, "when silence is betrayal."
"As I have walked," King told the crowd assembled in Riverside Church a
year before his assassination, "among the desperate, rejected and angry
young men I have told them that Molotov ****tails and rifles would not solve
their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while
maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through
nonviolent action. But they asked, and rightly so, what about Vietnam? They
asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its
problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home,
and 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 government. For the
sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the
hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent."
King could be imagined today asking a Senator who would claim to oppose the
occupation of a distant land while funding that violence with enough wealth
to remake the globe: "Why, Senator, will you not filibuster future bills to
fund this occupation? Ordinary citizens are sacrificing far more than the
embarrassment of attempting a legislative maneuver that might not succeed?.
Why will you not use the power you now possess for the good you claim to
endorse, prior to asking us to bestow still greater powers on you?"
"There is nothing wrong with power," King actually said in his final
address to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, "if power is used
correctly. You see, what happened is that some of our philosophers got off
base. And one of the great problems of history is that the concepts of love
and power have usually been contrasted as opposites, polar opposites, so
that love is identified with a resignation of power, and power with a denial
of love.
"It was this misinterpretation that caused Nietzsche, who was a
philosopher of the will to power, to reject the Christian concept of love.
It was this same misinterpretation which induced Christian theologians to
reject the Nietzschean philosophy of the will to power in the name of the
Christian idea of love. Now, we've got to get this thing right. What is
needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and
love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love
implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power
correcting everything that stands against love."
The strongest politicians do not support the waging of war against weaker
peoples. The strongest voices in the United States today oppose the
occupation of Iraq, and do so out of love for the people of Iraq and the
world, and do so with more than words.
_______
http://www.davidswanson.org [1]
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
By David Swanson
Created Jan 16 2008 - 9:34am
These are some of the words of Martin Luther King Jr.:
"The nonviolent strategy has been to dramatize the evils of our society in
such a way that pressure is brought to bear against those evils by the
forces of good will in the community and change is produced. The student
sit-ins of 1960 are a classic illustration of this method....
"So far we have had the Constitution backing most of the demands for
change, and this has made our work easier, since we could be sure that the
federal courts would usually back up our demonstrations legally. Now we are
approaching areas where the voice of the Constitution is not clear. We have
left the realm of constitutional rights and we are entering the area of
human rights.
"The Constitution assured the right to vote, but there is no such
assurance of the right to adequate housing, or the right to an adequate
income....
"The past three years have demonstrated the power of a committed, morally
sound minority to lead the nation.... Even the presence of a vital peace
movement and the campus protest against the war in Vietnam can be traced
back to the nonviolent action movement led by the Negro."
King was decidedly pro-change. But these are some more of his words:
"The white establishment is skilled in flattering and cultivating emerging
leaders. It presses its own image on them and finally, from imitation of
manners, dress, and style of living, a deeper strain of corruption develops.
This kind of Negro leader acquires the white man's contempt for the ordinary
Negro. He is often more at home with the middle-class white than he is among
his own people. His language changes, his location changes, his income
changes, and ultimately he changes from the representative of the Negro to
the white man into the white man's representative to the Negro. The tragedy
is that too often he does not recognize what has happened to him."
Yes, this is right-wing corporate-media color-blind hero, Martin Luther King
Jr. speaking about the white man and the Negro people. He was speaking about
what was, and what largely still is, not about what he dreamed might someday
be.
He was for change, but not for electing just anyone who said the word, and
not for letting pass the uncomfortable but necessary warning.
"A time comes," King said, "when silence is betrayal."
"As I have walked," King told the crowd assembled in Riverside Church a
year before his assassination, "among the desperate, rejected and angry
young men I have told them that Molotov ****tails and rifles would not solve
their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while
maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through
nonviolent action. But they asked, and rightly so, what about Vietnam? They
asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its
problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home,
and 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 government. For the
sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the
hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent."
King could be imagined today asking a Senator who would claim to oppose the
occupation of a distant land while funding that violence with enough wealth
to remake the globe: "Why, Senator, will you not filibuster future bills to
fund this occupation? Ordinary citizens are sacrificing far more than the
embarrassment of attempting a legislative maneuver that might not succeed?.
Why will you not use the power you now possess for the good you claim to
endorse, prior to asking us to bestow still greater powers on you?"
"There is nothing wrong with power," King actually said in his final
address to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, "if power is used
correctly. You see, what happened is that some of our philosophers got off
base. And one of the great problems of history is that the concepts of love
and power have usually been contrasted as opposites, polar opposites, so
that love is identified with a resignation of power, and power with a denial
of love.
"It was this misinterpretation that caused Nietzsche, who was a
philosopher of the will to power, to reject the Christian concept of love.
It was this same misinterpretation which induced Christian theologians to
reject the Nietzschean philosophy of the will to power in the name of the
Christian idea of love. Now, we've got to get this thing right. What is
needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and
love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love
implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power
correcting everything that stands against love."
The strongest politicians do not support the waging of war against weaker
peoples. The strongest voices in the United States today oppose the
occupation of Iraq, and do so out of love for the people of Iraq and the
world, and do so with more than words.
_______
http://www.davidswanson.org [1]
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson