What madness is that?
Here is an excerpt of his speech "Beyond Vietnam" which he gave in April 4, 1967 (one year before he was assassinated and forty years ago):
I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. 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, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. n the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands 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 nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.
You can read the entire speech (and listen to it) here: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm
As we look at the shootings at Virginia Tech, or the chaos in Iraq, or the deep desparity anywhere in the world, I think we should see things we can act on -- things we can do something about.
Dr. King said in "Beyond Vietnam" that "every bomb dropped in vietnam also explodes in Harlem." I think we have to have the courage to say that every bomb dropped in Baghdad also explodes on Baxter Street. We have enormous resources in this world, enormous possibilities to do good -- and yet we are squandering resources on insane things.
So we are rallying and chanting and marching and organizing for one thing: to end this madness.
All the info you need to know
What: "Beyond Iraq" march for peace and justice
Where: Tate Plaza (and then March to Arch and Chapel)
When: 10AM-12PM rallying, pamphleting out in Tate; 12 PM March
Who: UGA Campus Greens, UGA Pagans, Bahai Student Group, Students for Peace Action, UU Congregation, Women In Black, NAACP, and many more...
Why:
Zaid
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