The day has passed for superficial patriotism. He who lives with untruth lives in spiritual slavery. Freedom is still the bonus we receive for knowing the truth. There comes a time when silence becomes betrayal. I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without first having 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. Been a lot of applauding over the last few years. They applauded our total movement; theyve applauded me...Theres something strangely inconsistent about a nation and a press that will praise you when you say, Be non-violent toward Jim Clark, but will curse and damn you when you say, Be non-violent toward little brown Vietnamese children. Theres something wrong with that press! Im 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. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth with righteous indignation... A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. -Martin Luther King, Jr. Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam Love you, MLK. Let us not forget - amongst all the attempts to co-opt and corporatize and pacify MLKs image, words and legacy - that he was a true outspoken revolutionary. Let us be honest about what he stood for, and what he would think about the state of our affairs today.
Posted on: Tue, 21 Jan 2014 04:11:50 +0000
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