What might Dr. King say to us today?

Gecko & Fly

 In the wake of the holiday that honors him, I’ve been wondering “what might Dr. King say to us today?” The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is a man whom many of us consider a moral beacon for the ages. His life ended more than fifty years ago, but we value moral beacons because their guidance transcends their own times.

We certainly could use a moral beacon right now. We’ve just lived through a year of historic tumult and upheaval. The pandemic has disrupted our lives on every imaginable level. We lived through a long summer of mass popular demonstrations against systemic racism. An incredibly divisive political season has so far crescendoed (at the time of this writing) into the spectacle of a thank-God-failed insurrection/coup d’état.

What might Dr. King say about all of this? It’s impossible (unless you believe in séances) to ask him directly. But some of the things he wrote and said point us toward his probable reading of some of today’s major recent events. If I tried to address all of today’s issues with his thoughts, this would be a very long post. Instead, I’ll focus on two top headlines of today.

What might Dr. King say about the insurrection at the Capitol?

Dr. King loved his country. Even though he opposed white supremacists in positions of power, he still could write, “the goal of America is freedom.” In his Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963) he cited “the American dream,” and the goal of “bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.”

The white supremacist mob that stormed the Capitol would have looked all too familiar to him. Their (literal and spiritual) parents and grandparents created the Jim Crow South where he focused his resistance work. Of their racist laws, he wrote, “All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority.”

The insurrectionists attacked this police officer with a crutch, a night stick, fists, and assorted poles—including a pole attached to an American flag. (WUSA9)

He also would have condemned their violence. King decried “hate filled policemen [who] curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters,” but his whole life was devoted to nonviolence. He would have unequivocally decried assaults such as the one pictured above.

“Violence brings only temporary victories; violence, by creating many more social problems than it solves, never brings permanent peace,” he wrote. Moreover, “Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.”

What might Dr. King say about the impact of the pandemic?

I think he would have been most outraged by the stark, enduring, inequalities the pandemic laid bare. The scourge of poverty, and the systemic racism he sought to dismantle all his life, roared into vivid prominence when COVID-19 pervaded the nation.

This chart captures a snapshot of data from May 5, 2020 that demonstrates the uneven impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on different racial groups (Todd Trumbull/San Francisco Chronicle)

Unequal access to health care, environmental pollution in poor neighborhoods, and inadequate access to healthy nutrition in “food deserts” had already afflicted communities of color with higher rates of diseases and health conditions that made residents of these communities more vulnerable to the disease and its most virulent manifestations.

In this case, we don’t have to ask, “what might Dr. King say?” because we know he said “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” We know he advocated for “the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty.”

In 2020, we outgassed a lot of platitudes about the value of “essential workers,” many of whom are Black, Latinx, or Asian. But although they can’t work remotely and therefore court death each day they go to work, they often still don’t have adequate health coverage, and they weren’t in the earliest cohort of vaccine recipients, even though they were supposed to be near the front of the line.

A hallmark of capitalist systems is tiers of access, a hierarchy of who gets how much, of what quality, and when. As King put it, capitalism “has brought about a system that takes necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes.” In his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, he said, “There is nothing new about poverty. What is new, however, is that we have the resources to get rid of it.”

What might Dr. King say about where we go from here?

I think he’s left us plenty of guidance on that question, too. “We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools,” he warned. He also said, “We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now.”

“If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight,” he wrote from the Birmingham jail.

Native Americans of the Navajo Nation people, pick up supplies from a food bank set up at the Navajo Nation town of Casamero Lake in New Mexico on May 20, 2020. (Mark Ralston/AFP via Getty Images and ABC News)

On a different occasion, he warned, “We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there "is" such a thing as being too late. This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action.”

Let’s not be too late. After all, “The time is always right, to do what's right.”

IMAGE and QUOTATIONS CREDITS:

IMAGES: Many thanks to Gecko & Fly, for the header image. Many thanks also to WUSA 9, for the horrifying photo of the police officer being beaten by the insurrectionist mob at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. I’m grateful to graphic artist Todd Trumbull of the San Francisco Chronicle for the “Racial Disparities in COVID-19” chart from May 5, 2020. I also want to thank Mark Ralston of AFP via Getty Images and ABC News, for the May 20, 2020 photo of the relief station in the Navajo Nation.

QUOTES: Many of these resources supplied overlapping quotes, while others offered new insights. For a deep dive into the wisdom and sayings of Dr. King, I appreciate Christian Animal Ethics, The African Studies Center of the University of Pennsylvania (complete text of Letter from a Birmingham Jail), Gecko & Fly, Food for the Hungry, In These Times, and Common Dreams.

How should we honor Dr. King's legacy?

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was gunned down almost 52 years ago. Depending on where we live, we've been observing the holiday that honors him for 34 years, as of today. There are wide variations in the ways people observe (or don't pay much heed to) this holiday. But really. How should we honor Dr. King's legacy?

King's words ring as true now as ever. Senators, are you listening? (Image courtesy of PassportCamps)

What did Dr. King stand for?

King is known as a civil rights activist and a key leader in the struggles of African Americans to break the shackles of the Jim Crow era. He certainly was those things. He found his forum as a Baptist preacher, at a time when the church was the center of nearly every black community (a place of empowerment since Reconstruction and before). 

But his influence and his message soon reached far beyond the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. A prolific speaker, writer and seemingly-tireless advocate for civil rights, voting rights, peace, and the empowerment of the poor, he also was a scholar and thinker. 

And more of a socialist and anti-war activist than many in America wanted to accept (neither then, nor, in many ways, still today). He was subject to bouts of depression. Not always "liberated" in terms of women's equality. In other words, he was human. Complicated. Flawed. 

(Image courtesy of QuotesGram)

We shouldn't be surprised. Nobody's an icon in real life. But in light of his complicated nature, how should we honor Dr. King's legacy? I'd say the key is looking to his core values--the ideals he returned to again and again in his life. These are racial equality, as well as his work against poverty (which fueled his socialist thought) and war (noted for his devotion to nonviolence, he also spoke out strongly against the Vietnam War).

Racial equality

We are very far from King's vision of a diverse society untainted by racial injustice. If anything, recent years have seen a resurgence of white supremacist sentiment and a bloody wave of hate crimes along with it. If you hate hate crimes, perhaps you'd like to support the nemesis of hate crime perpetrators.

How should we honor Dr. King's legacy? Well, first of all, we can stand up against hate in our own personal lives.

White folks, we have a big responsibility in this area. To start with, we need to about the diversity within our own communities. Refuse to listen in appalled silence or titter weakly when someone cracks a racist joke or makes a racially insensitive comment.

Educate ourselves about white privilege, institutional racism, and the many ways that microaggressions and cultural appropriation wound and inhibit others. That's base-level, elementary stuff.

Beyond that, we white folks need to consciously expand our lives and our circles. Welcome and support persons of color in our workplaces, our places of worship, and our associations. Read the work of diverse writers (buy their books!)

Voting Rights go hand-in-hand with racial equality

One of the hardest-fought campaigns of the civil rights era was the effort to achieve equal voting rights for African Americans. The white supremacists who held a lock on the portals of power in those days would literally kill to prevent black people from voting (the contrast with King's nonviolent approach was part of what made the Civil Rights Movement so moving to people all over the world).

(Image courtesy of Medium)

We live in another era when voting rights--especially voting rights for persons of color--are under heavy attack. Between voter-roll purges, gerrymandering, ID requirements, and other shenanigans designed to disadvantage the poor, there is lots of corruption to fight. It will take advocacy by everyone to fight it!

How should we honor Dr. King's legacy?

Concrete steps we can take? Support voting rights for all. That includes felons who've done their time. Black communities have been decimated by a prison-industrial complex. Their lobbyists and lawmakers who want to be seen as "tough on crime" developed a system that unfairly targets impoverished (mostly black) communities.

Voting rights were a key goal of the civil rights movement. They're still highly relevant today! Advocate to your legislators. Support the League of Women Voters. And for pity's sake, vote yourself, to elect candidates and causes that support equality!

Poverty

Dr. King was fighting poverty by supporting the Poor People's Campaign when he was assassinated. But poverty is at least as institutionally entrenched now as it was then.

Even King himself (a college-educated member of the black middle class) was originally unaware of how profound poverty could be in the US, until he visited a black school in an impoverished rural community in the Mississippi Delta. There he saw the results of food insecurity for himself. He was, in the Christian sense, convicted by what he saw. From that time forward he held a special place in his heart for the poor.

King observed many systemic forces trapping people in poverty, even when they strove to prosper (Image courtesy of United Way of Southeast Missouri).

He developed a burning sense of the injustice of the system. Conservatives then as today speak of "personal responsibility." They see it as primary in determining someone's prosperity or poverty. To King, this is a flawed analysis.

He argued for changes to the system itself. In the latter part of his life, King increasingly saw the problem of poverty as an inescapable failing that is intrinsic to any capitalist economic system.

King's work against poverty likely fueled his interest in socialism, which dates back at least to his studies at Crozer Theological Seminary and his study of the work of Walter Rauschenbusch. (Times Live, South Africa)

King's embrace of socialism

During the 1960s, the US reached the height of the Cold War with the Soviets, and plowed deeper into the Vietnam War against communism (more on that later).

Within a decade or so of Senator Joseph McCarthy's campaign to root out what he saw as a communist infiltration of the USA, socialism was deeply unpopular. Dr. King's embrace of it and his antipathy to the Vietnam War meant he was seriously unpopular in much of America at the time of his death.

Socialism remains "a dirty word" today in some quarters, but half a century after King died, some segments of the economy see it as an interesting proposition.

(Image courtesy of Medium)

The more progressive wing of the Democratic Party has fielded several candidates who embrace socialistic economic strategies, including Bernie Sanders, who labels himself a "democratic socialist," and another who espouses a basic minimum income. Andrew Yang calls it the "Freedom Dividend."

How should we honor Dr. King's legacy? Whatever your opinions on the best ways to combat poverty, it's certainly true that advocacy, donations, and volunteerism to aid the poor are always needed.

War

Aside from his socialist bent, King's opposition to the Vietnam War earned him a lot of enemies. Given his commitment to nonviolence his opposition should surprise no one. And with the hindsight of history we can see that he made some good points, although some might not accept his assertion that “we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam.”

No stranger to opposition, Dr. King followed his convictions on the Vietnam War, despite the cost to his reputation. (Image courtesy of PassportCamps)

But have you done a serious review of the decisions, assumptions and motivations that led our nation's leaders into that war? Unfortunately, it bolsters his opinion that “we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam.”

Testing weapons on civilians? Unfortunately, yes.

He also was right that the US was testing weapons on the Vietnamese people. The Vietnam War became an ugly arena for the widespread use of chemical weapons. CS gas was deployed to drive combatants out of tunnels, but they often asphyxiated or were left with lesions on their lungs.

Agent Orange had been used as a defoliant before Vietnam, but never so widely as a weapon. The US contaminated almost a quarter of South Vietnam with the stuff, which decays into dioxin, a persistent carcinogen. The environmental and human destruction persist to this day.

While napalm had been used in a limited way during World War II and the Korean War, it was widely deployed against both Vietnamese civilians and Vietcong fighters. Although President Nixon later tried to convince the US public that napalm wasn't being used on civilians, there were too many journalists in-country, and too much of it was dumped over too broad an area to support that lie.

King's opposition to the Vietnam War won him little favor. (Image courtesy of Veterans for Peace)

The most horrifying weapons-test of the Vietnam War era never happened, however: a Defense Department consultant group discouraged testing the use of tactical nuclear weapons in Vietnam strongly enough that the idea was (thank goodness!) scrubbed.

How should we honor Dr. King's legacy? In my opinion, we all have an obligation to advocate for diplomacy over strutting arrogance and saber-rattling. Ways to promote peace? Contact your legislators. Demonstrate, if you're so inclined and have the opportunity. Vote for rational candidates who take a measured approach to conflict resolution.

It's also important to remember that peace begins at home. In our families and in our communities, intelligent communication and our commitment to de-escalation of violence (including violent words) sets a peace-friendly tone.

How should we honor Dr. King's legacy?

There are many ways to honor King's life and work. I think one of the best is by remembering what a complex, courageous, and deep-thinking person he was. His memory endures in part from the brilliance of his writing and the complexities and deep morality that drove him.

He can't be reduced to a symbol of just one thing, if we're honest. And there's no telling how differently we would remember him, if he hadn't been killed in the middle of his work.

He didn't get there with us. Indeed, we're still a long way from getting there. But the hope in his vision and the power of his courage offer ideas about how we should honor Dr. King's legacy. (Image by Heidi Yosinski/Penn State News, via Laura Schulenberg Cole)

IMAGE CREDITS: Many thanks to Passport Camps, for the "measure of a man"and "do what is right" quote images. I appreciate the Sunday Times of South Africa for the "necessities from the many" quote image, and QuotesGram, for the "valley of segregation" quote image. Thanks are due to Medium, for the "power of the vote" and "guaranteed income" quote images; to Veterans for Peace, for the "purveyor of violence" quote image, and to design student Heidi Yosinski, Penn State, and Laura Schulenberg Cole for the "mountaintop" quote image. I'm indebted to you all!

Freedom of religion

Monday's post was partially inspired by a column I saw in the newspaper. Today's post is, too. Same issue of the Kansas City Star, actually. But this one originated in The Times of Israel. Sorry to say, it has a pretty dark tone. I'm talking about freedom of religion.

Yes, I mean the clause in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that goes, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

But I'm also talking about more than that. The need for--and the attacks against--individuals' freedom of religion is a worldwide issue. And 2019 was a challenging year for those who support the idea, because it was a pretty scary time to assemble for worship.

Fire in the holy places

I could approach this topic of attacks on places of worship from several directions. War, terrorism, hate crimes, shootings, bombings, arson (whether intentional or negligent) . . . Some took worshipers' lives. Some "only" took historic buildings, holy books, or other sacred objects.

But all took peace of mind. All took traditions and cherished ways of being. And all scarred people's lives.

St. Mary Baptist Church was the first of three historically black churches burned near Opelousas, Louisiana by an arsonist now charged with hate crimes. (photo by Natalie Obregon/NBC News).

Firefighters eye the smoldering remains of the Adas Israel Congregation's 118-year-old synagogue, which went up in flames this year. Although not the result of a hate crime, it was an example of irresponsible behavior that resulted in devastating loss. (Photo from MPR/Dan Kraker, via Jewish Telegraphic Agency).

Assailants burned statues and holy books in a southern Sindh Province Hindu temple. The brazen attack sparked censure from the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan on his Twitter feed. Police officials promised an independent investigation, while the advisor to a local Hindu council demanded greater security for Hindu temples. (Photo from Imran Khan/Times of India).

Without respect for others, we all live in peril from that third kind of fire.

Bullets, Bombs, and other Explosives

It isn't only fire that's been a threat to holy places this year. Even more destructive to the lives of worshipers is violent intent. People have fired hundreds of rounds, or lobbed bombs and grenades into sacred spaces. Into peaceful crowds of people just practicing their faith.

It's hard for me to grapple with the depth of dysfunction and twisted logic that makes such an act seem rational to anyone. But the evidence that it can be rationalized was overwhelming this year.

A soldier stares at the destruction of a Roman Catholic cathedral in Jolo, Philippines. Two suicide bombers detonated their explosives during Mass last January (photo from WESMINCOM Armed Forces of the Philippines Via AP/Times of Israel)

In a possible retaliation for the cathedral bombing, two Muslim scholars died and four others suffered injuries in a grenade attack on a mosque in Zamboanga. (Photo from Armed Forces of Philippines via AP/Al Jazeera)

Mourners outside the Al-Noor Mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, where a white supremacist gunned down 40 people on March 15 (Photo from Agence France-Presse/Reuters via VOA)

Bombs went off on Easter Sunday during services in several locations in Sri Lanka. Here's what was left of the sanctuary at St. Sebastian's Church, where 104 people died. (Photo from AP/Chamila Karunarathne via The Times of Israel)

On the final day of Passover, a gunman opened fire on congregants at the Chabad of Poway Synagogue (California). This picture shows a makeshift memorial set up across the street. (Photo from AP/Gregory Bull via The Times of Israel).

Can't we make it stop?

Are you exhausted by the carnage yet? We've only made it to the end of April 2019, with our latter set of photos above. There's been lots of violence since then, but I think we all more than get the point.

There are dangerous people out there. They have guns, bombs, grenades, and flames--and they're not afraid to use them. They're not ashamed to attack innocent people in worship services, although any such act is shameful and cowardly. They don't care if a place has historic significance, or if it means something to others, although that attitude is invariably brutish and self-serving. Nothing within themselves seems to hold them back, and no security system will stop them all. 

But we can and must do better than this.

We must support broader access to mental health care and social services--not only because it's the right thing to do, but because it can help defuse the human hatred that sets off all-too-literal bombs. Keep pushing back till commonsense curbs put access to deadly weapons of mass destruction out of unauthorized reach. Strive for greater educational and economic opportunity for all, since we know that inequity breeds resentment and hatred. Stay alert for problems festering in our midst, and fearlessly call them out.

Freedom of religion isn't only an American concept. It's a basic universal human right (see Article 18). If we don't uphold and defend it as a right for all, then it is secure for none of us.

IMAGE CREDITS: 
Many thanks to AZ Quotes for the wisdom from Thomas Jefferson. I am indebted to NBC News and Natalie Obregon for the photo of St. Mary Baptist Church in Louisiana; to Jewish Telegraphic Agency for the MPR/Dan Kraker photo of the burned remains of Adas Israel Congregation's synagogue; and to Imran Khan, via The Times of India for the photo from the temple in Kumb. I'm grateful for the quote about fear and fire by boxing coach Cus D'Amato, from Authentic Traveling with Andrew Scott. 
Many thanks to the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Associated Press, via Times of Israel and via Al Jazeera, for the photos of aftermaths from the two Philippine bombings. I'm also grateful to Agence France-Presse/Reuters via VOA for the photo from New Zealand, and to the AP and Chamila Karunarathne via The Times of India, for the photo from inside the sanctuary of St. Sebastian's. Thanks also to AP and Gregory Bull via The Times of Israel, for the photo from Poway, CA.
Finally, I deeply appreciate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s wisdom, and the image from The Peace Alliance that gives it a dramatic presentation.