Monday, July 18, 2022

I got shot


I know it's still early but today, I got shot. Yesterday, I got shot. My history and experience tells me that tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow I'll get shot. I stopped, I got shot. I reached for requested documentation, I got shot. I had my cell phone in my hand, I got shot. I had a legal weapon and said so, I got shot. I ran in fear, I got shot. I was 12 years old playing alone in a park, I got shot. I was driving an old car that backfired, I got shot. I was asleep in my bed, I got shot. I was relaxing, alone in my home, I got shot. A neighbor was concerned about me, called for help, I got shot. I committed a non-violent low level felony with no indication of a weapon, I didn't get shot. I got suffocated. I carried a sign saying stop shooting me. I got shot.

White men kill police officers or parade participants or church goers or protesters and get their day in court and maybe even lunch, or a glass of water and a thank you, for good measure. I get handcuffed while dying in the street. The rivers are becoming salty from my tears. But it's okay, because it's my fault. I got shot.

 

Tuesday, June 21, 2022

Fathers and Freedom

If you attend June 19th services at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Cleveland, OH you might have heard this message. To you I say, But wait there's more! Please continue reading to get more of my thoughts on Juneteenth and Fathers' Day.

Matthew 7:9-10

9 “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?

In 2021, I suppose as an acknowledgement of the reality of slavery and its long-term effects on American Descendants of Slaves (ADOS), the U.S. Congress in a very rare show of solidarity, enacted a law making Juneteenth a Federal holiday.

A little background here. Schools in this country typically teach that Abraham Lincoln, The Great Emancipator, “freed the slaves” with Proclamation 95 (the Emancipation Proclamation) on January 1, 1863. Proclamation 95 however only freed slaves in states that were currently part of the Confederate States of America (CSA) and in rebellion against the government of the USA. Proclamation 95 was a political and military tactic whose goal was to destabilize the Confederacy by encouraging slave populations to flee to northern and western non slave holding states.

On June 19, 1865, in Galveston, TX, Union Army General Gordon Granger issued General Order No. 3 which was a statement about the Union Army's military rule of the defeated Confederacy and said among other things that “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.” Black dockworkers quickly spread the news to the black population of Galveston touching off a week's worth of prayer and celebration.

General Order No. 3, like it's more well known predecessor Proclamation 95, was one of 20 “Emancipation Proclamations” issued in the United States from 1780 to 1865 that attempted to put a band-aid on the gaping wound of slavery. In fact many of these proclamations were concerned less with how to actually deal with the issue of freed slaves and more with enumerating exactly how slave owners were to be compensated for their loss of a significant financial resource.

In 2022 Juneteenth falls on the day we also celebrate Fathers and Fatherhood. Does anyone appreciate the irony of celebrating freedom and fatherhood on the same day, when for so long black men have been circumscribed by the dominant society from truly celebrating either.

Prior to the end of the Civil War black families lived in constant fear that they would be separated from each other by a system that refused to acknowledge their human need to create and care for families. Fathers and mothers were sold away from each other and from their children, many never to be heard from again. After the Civil War it was common to see ads in newspapers and publications from formerly enslaved people trying to find family members.

Libra Hilde, in her 2020 book, Slavery, Fatherhood, and Paternal Duty in African American Communities over the Long Nineteenth Century, maintained that despite the challenges of living under a system of cruelty and complete disregard for their humanity, Black and enslaved men were loving, involved, and emotionally invested in their children, despite the barriers erected by white society. She demonstrates that Black fathers consistently provided for their children during and after slavery. Enslaved men regularly supported their families and communities in covert ways, as “their influence over their children was often subtle, indirect, and hidden from ‘dominant society’,” subverting and resisting the expectations of white society on a daily basis “within the intimate spaces of the father/child relationship” Hilde contends that caretaking was a form of resistance for enslaved men, as they attempted to covertly reappropriate the paternal role back from their enslavers.

There were instances where enslaved men, if they had a marketable skill, could make extra money if their master allowed them to sell their services. (The original side hustle). They might then be allowed to purchase their freedom. If successful, they would often then face a cruel choice. In many slave holding states the status of an unborn child was determined by the status of the mother. Thus a free black woman's child would be born free and an enslaved black woman's child would be born a slave. Black men who found a way out of enslavement, through either escape or earning extra money, very often had to decide whether to take the opportunity to gain their own freedom and hope they could come for their family later or ensure freedom for their wife and/or children while they themselves remained under the lash.

As a member of the Episcopal Church (ECUSA) I have to give a shout out here to Absalom Jones. At the age of 16 Absalom was sold away from his mother and several siblings. In 1770 he was allowed to marry an enslaved woman named Mary. By 1778 Absalom had earned and saved enough money to purchase his freedom. With the memory of his lost family in mind he bought his wife's freedom instead. In this way, he insured his children would be born free, and not as slaves. He was not freed himself until six years later in 1784.

Many people are under the mistaken impression that the attack on black men as fathers ended when slavery ended. Oh that I could say that was so!

For a brief period of history which we call Reconstruction it seemed as if the country might be able to begin healing from the long bleak period of human cruelty and the attendant pain. Then came the end of reconstruction and the beginning of almost another century of enshrining the secondary status of black people in both law and custom.

Black men were portrayed in news and entertainment media as “bad” fathers, neglectful and uninterested in their children, leaving black women to be seen as “superwomen” raising children without the support of black fathers. (That's a looong discussion for another day).

Just as during enslavement the role of black men as fathers was constricted and restricted by the dominant society. During the period we call Jim Crow black men were targeted for both judicial and extrajudicial execution. If a black man tried to stand up as a protector for his family against white aggression, he ran the risk of being killed. Many black men in the south were forced to choose leaving their families to find economic opportunities in the north or west, thereby separating them from their partners and children. Those who chose to stay were forced to suffer cruelty and economic deprivation and restraints on their ability to care for their families.

After the Great Depression and World War II the U.S. began looking at ways to help returning veterans and build the middle class. Here again black fathers were discouraged or even legally banned from taking advantage of programs designed to uplift families.

Then came the creation of social welfare programs in the 1960s and 1970s. “Welfare” was originally called Aid to Families with Dependent Children or AFDC. It was a program to give families a hand when things got rough. Keeping them and their children out of poverty. There was no requirement that recipients had to be families with single parents (usually women) as heads of households. As with many such programs when black people began to use these programs as a means to try and improve their lives, changes were implemented which brought direct harm to the institution of the black family. Suddenly families with mothers and fathers present were not eligible for assistance. Black fathers were very often targeted for enforcement, with families under constant scrutiny to make sure they were not “scamming the system”. If fathers were present in the home and the family was receiving welfare assistance the father or mother could be arrested and sent to jail. Thus black fathers were once again faced with the choice of leaving their families to help make sure they were fed or working covertly to circumvent a system which was being constantly redesigned and adapted to criminalize them as they exercised their role as fathers.

In 1965 Daniel Moynihan co-authored what became known as the Moynihan Report. In this treatise Moynihan maintained that there was a crisis in the black community because of instability of black families. Nowhere did he consider the ways in which the then current welfare system penalized black fathers who didn't “abandon” their families. Imagine being a black child bombarded with the message that your father, indeed your entire family, was bad. If your family needed public assistance and your father was around he was a criminal and you had to be always on the lookout for the social worker who might come and take him away. If he wasn't around he was a "deadbeat dad", a lowlife, who abandoned his responsibilities. Despite these assaults black fathers continued to endure. In many ways falling back on lessons learned from slave ancestors. I refer you again to Libra Hilde. Just as had been the case during the long period of enslavement “Black men were loving, involved, and emotionally invested in their children, despite the barriers erected by white society. ….Black fathers consistently provided for their children …. and regularly supported their families and communities in covert ways, as “their influence over their children was often subtle, indirect, and hidden from ‘dominant society’,” subverting and resisting the expectations of white society on a daily basis “within the intimate spaces of the father/child relationship”

Then came the “War on Drugs” further increasing the criminalization of black men and the assault on their role as fathers. In 1970 black people represented 11.1% of the general population in the U.S. But 46.4% of the prison population in December 1973. From 1973 to 1979, the black rate of incarceration rose by 47.9 percent, compared to a rise of only 40.6 percent among whites. So now there was a significant percentage of black fathers once again forced away from their families. A two-year study by the National Research Council concluded that the increase in incarceration rates was historically unprecedented, that the U.S. far outpaced the incarceration rates elsewhere in the world, and that high incarceration rates disproportionately affected Hispanic and black communities.

With further infringement on individual liberty, such as the 1994 crime bill, came more assaults on black men's ability to function as fathers. If you were convicted of a felony your ability to work and support yourself as well as your family became even more severely limited. Felons could not vote in most states. If you were a felon you could not apply for most types of federal and/or state assistance, including housing, food and education. Perhaps one of the most egregious infringements of rights, which harkens back to the early days of the “welfare reform” movement, when the mere presence of black fathers became a crime, was the prohibition of felons in public housing. Those living in public housing were not allowed to have convicted felons living with or even visiting with them. If you were a black man released from prison as a convicted felon and your family lived in public housing you were prohibited by law from living with them. If you attempted to do so you risked further incarceration and your family risked eviction. Once again black men had to draw upon their ingenuity and the wisdom of the ancestors to function as fathers in a society still hostile to them.

Many times men and their current or former partners had private arrangements among themselves to manage their family situation and finances. They would visit their children or even in some cases share custody. They would buy clothes, food, diapers etc when needed. Then came efforts to corral “dead beat dads”. Social workers would force “single” mothers to turn in fathers of their children or else be denied needed benefits. These men were then put into a system which took away their ability to function as fathers based on their own and their partners circumstances. They were now given set amounts that they had to pay, not directly to their partners or children but to a court system which already considered them criminals. This then became a barrier to finding a job which led to inability to keep up with court mandated payments resulting in incarceration – a vicious circle.

So while you're celebrating Juneteenth on this Fathers' Day, think about what we need to do in order to free thousands of black men to be the best fathers they can be.




Sunday, June 7, 2020

I Can't Breathe redux

I published the following in 2017.

ARE YOU A GOOD ONE?
It's been a very long time since I posted anything here. For the past two and a half years or more I have felt like Eric Garner - I can't breathe.

In 2016 enough Americans voted for him to elect Donald Trump as 45th president of the United States. Words I hoped and prayed I would never say. This was a man who during his campaign said that Mexicans in the U.S. were all rapists and criminals, praised dictators and murders like Adolf Hitler, Kim Jong-Un, Joseph Stalin and Rodrigo Duterte, a man who said outright that he wanted to ban Muslims from entering the United States and who in referring to women spoke of "grabbing 'em by their pussy". I find it difficult to preface this person's name with the title "President" so will henceforth refer to him as "45"

When I was a child the wisdom of the dominant culture was that police officers were our friends. We could go to them if we were in trouble and they would try to help us. The police motto after all was "To protect and serve." I never was quite able to believe that. To me the police were an occupying force, marching down the streets bristling with arms. Their job was to protect other people from me,  and people like me, and to serve the status quo. I heard stories of people beaten by police. As a 12 year old I watched a police officer harass and intimidate a school mate. Whispers of people in police custody mysteriously dying.

You would think that over the decades things would have changed but guess what, they haven't. They have in fact gotten worse. Or maybe it's just that we now have full (er) disclosure. As black bodies continue to pile up the stench is finally getting to be impossible to ignore. Inner city residents are for the most part a marginalized people with the inherent distrust of authority that goes with that. Police are the symbol of that authority. And they all to frequently abuse it. There is now exhaustive video  proof of what we have known and experienced for decades. (We weren't the ones who needed proof, but in case you did.) The Justice Department has been to Cleveland. In a fairly comprehensive report they have documented decades of abuses of power by police.

In recent weeks 45 made a speech to a police organization in which he ignored a key concept of our legal system - innocent until proven guilty- and gave "law enforcement" agents carte blanche to abuse suspects with impunity. I believe one of the more frightening statements he made was something to the effect of  "don't bother being nice to them" There was no mistaking what he was saying or the response of the officers, who cheered and applauded.

The organization representing Police Chiefs was quick to distance themselves from 45's statements and say that they believe in treating every civilian with respect and dignity. I guess the officers who laughed and applauded didn't get that particular memo. Several of the unions representing police officers, including Cleveland's own Steve Loomis,  agreed with 45 and praised him. All well and good for the Association of Chiefs of Police to say they don't condone mistreating suspects but I have to wonder, if the Chiefs are disavowing this behavior and officers are cheering it where is the disconnect and what are the Chiefs doing to address it? I have seen very little evidence to back up the Police Chiefs' claim of fair treatment.

When we complain and protest the response is "Blue Lives Matter" and talk about how we are attacking police. Listen to the wisdom of Kareem Abdul Jabaar - "Police are not under attack, institutionalized racism is. Trying to remove sexually abusive priests is not an attack on Catholicism, nor is removing ineffective teachers an attack on education. Bad apples, bad training, and bad officials who blindly protect them, are the enemy. And any institution worth saving should want to eliminate them, too."

Right before 45 made this speech I was in the grocery store waiting for someone to pick me up. This store has a uniformed Cleveland Police Officer as a security guard. The officer that day happened to be black. Standing in line was a young black woman with two very young children, both probably under 5 years old. As I smiled at their antics the younger child, a boy, looked up at the police officer and asked him in all seriousness "are you a good one?" As I sat there with my heart shattered, blood rushing in my ears, I'm sure the officer must have responded in the affirmative but I couldn't even hear his response. What must he have felt, to have this child, so young he could barely get the words out ask him this question? What about this smiling child, interrupting his play with his sister to make sure he was safe? Or his young mother who surely knows that, not so many years from now, when her child leaves her presence she will have to worry that she might not see him alive or whole again.

After negative feedback 45 said that he was just joking. Is that why the audience laughed and applauded? I watched the video of the speech and did not get a hint of sarcasm or humor. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a book about the Birmingham campaign called "Why We Can't Wait"  in which he addressed the call of people to let things take their natural course, or not to upset the apple cart. It's worth reading and as timely now as it was when he originally wrote it.

The leader of our country encourages police brutality and later says it's a joke. Police officers sworn to protect and serve cheer and applaud  him. Everyday a new name is added to the list of our ancestors gone too soon through state sponsored violence. Children not even in school  yet know that they can't trust the person in uniform. My heart lies on the floor of the grocery store broken into pieces. We can't wait.
I can't... breathe.

FAST FORWARD 3 YEARS

I REALLY hate repeating myself but I can't ...breathe

Ahmaud Arbery
George Floyd
Jamel Floyd
Botham Jean
Atatiana Jefferson
Justin Howell
Sean Monterossa
Breonna Taylor

I'm going to assume that if you are reading my blog you know who these people are. If you don't know you've got work to do. (Hint they're all DEAD).  These names and scores more stretching back for over a hundred years are etched in the psyche of black people in this country. Do your friends and family know who these people are? Your non-black co-workers? Have you talked to them about these murders?

I have a question for those of you born before 1970. Do you remember being 10 years old? What was your greatest fear? Did you stand in a crowd watching armed men and tanks rolling through your neighborhood? Were you terrified when the police came to the door hassling your mother and asking where your father was? (Thinking back he probably was in violation of curfew). Did you walk to school through a war zone and hear how this was your folks' fault? At 12 did you watch in fear as a grown man, who, from your child's perspective, looked almost like a giant, used the power of his uniform and authority to manhandle and terrorize a fellow schoolgirl. For almost a week I was that frightened little girl again. She never really goes away. Do you know why? Fifty years later she still lives in occupied territory. She lives in a country that tells her that her life is negligible; where the struggle of just living day to day is summed up in trendy hashtags like driving while black or jogging while black. I wasn't surprised by the murder of George Floyd and if you were you haven't been paying attention.

Like so much else in the U.S.,  policing has it's roots in slavery. The genesis of organized policing was slave patrols.  Their job was the control of black bodies and making sure that black people stayed in their place. These vigilante groups were allowed to use intimidation, terror and whatever force they deemed necessary up to and including death. People didn't care how they did it. They just wanted results.  https://theconversation.com/the-racist-roots-of-american-policing-from-slave-patrols-to-traffic-stops-112816  This sounds all to familiar.

"It's just a few bad apples" "Most cops are good people" Good people who are an occupying force in our communities. How much longer and how many more deaths before it becomes clear that policing in our country is a bad system? 

Let's look at that apple analogy for a minute. You've got a barrel of apples that has worms in it. Would you throw some good ones in hoping to get rid of the worms or would you know that those good apples are gonna be worm food. You gotta stop ignoring those worms, throw out the apples and scrub that barrel clean. Better yet Get A New Barrel!

A diseased tree cannot produce good fruit. Ask a guy named Matthew "A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit." Matt 7:18:  “Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad; for the tree is known by its fruit." Matt 12:33. I could bore you with facts and figures but I won't. (Google is your friend). This tree we call policing has long been producing a very big crop of very strange fruit and it's past time to cut it down.

There's been quite a bit of feel good news coverage recently over some cops who knelt in front of protestors as a show of some kind of solidarity. Yay?

That makes a great photo op and ....what? I'm back to that little boy in the grocery store - "Are you a good one?"  Do we hear from you when it takes months or even years to even get an indictment when a police officer kills someone? Are you there when a police officer clearly violates your own rules, someone dies and the officer gets paid administrative leave while a family struggles to find money for a funeral?  Where were you when Timothy Loehman murdered Tamir Rice, or when Michael Brelo jumped on the hood of Timothy Russell and Malissa William's car and fired 15 rounds through the windshield. I could go on but you get the picture.

Call me a cynic but my momma didn't raise  no fool. If a bunch of police officers drop to their knees in front of me I'm heading for the hills cause it was probably preceded by the word ready and followed by aim and fire. They are just going to have to shoot me in the back. Like Walter Scott.



Friday, March 13, 2020

2020 PRIMARY BLUES


2020 PRIMARY BLUES
(SUNG TO THE TUNE OF “HEAVEN ON THEIR MINDS” WITH APOLOGIES TO SIR ANDREW LLOYD WEBER)

My mind is clearer now
At last all too well
I can see, CNN’s got to me.
If you listen to,  the news in the main
You might see what they want you to see.

Bernie! We started to believe
The things they say of you
We really did believe, our leader could be you.
But all the good you’ve done
Will soon get swept away
Socialism is the word now holding sway

Listen Bernie, I don’t like what I see.
All I ask is that you listen to me.
And remember, I’ve been on your side all along.
You have set us all on fire
The working class’s new Messiah
Main Stream Media hasn’t joined the throng

I remember when this whole thing began
No talk of President, for Senate you ran
And believe me, my admiration for you hasn’t died.
But every word you say today
Gets twisted round some other way.
They’ll misquote you and they’ll say you’ve lied.

Listen Bernie, just get out of this race.
Don’t you see we must keep in our place.
Remember Occupy! Have you forgotten how put down we are.
They are frightened by the crowd.
For we are getting much too loud
And they’ll crush is if we go too far.

Listen Bernie, to the warning I give.
Please believe I want this movement to live.
But it’s sad to see our chances weakening with every hour.
They are saying we are blind.
Economic Justice on our minds

Either choice will make my mood turn sour
Yes my mood turn sour.

Wednesday, August 26, 2015

Politics As Usual?



I recently participated in a trivia game involving questions about presidential politics in the U.S. At the end of the game it occurred to me that except for President Obama there were very few questions about the participation of African Americans or women in the presidential election process over the past 300 years.

At first I was discouraged. I thought, like so many who rely on main stream media, that this was because of the dearth of such participation but then I pictured a couple of women standing in front of me, reminding me that just because we don’t get talked about doesn’t mean we aren’t there. We’ve been told over and over that Presidential Politics in the U.S. has always been “all old white men all the time.” We’ve been told it so often that we have started to believe it. That’s not quite the entire story.

 I’ve been "advised" that I should support Hilary Clinton even if I have reservations because she’s our first, best shot at getting real female participation in the presidential election process and getting a woman in the White House. While she might be our best shot to date she is by no means the first.

It’s way past time that we as African Americans and/or women reclaim our place and our history as participating citizens in this democracy of ours. It’s time for us to deny and deconstruct the myth that we’ve been kept down by our circumstances.  We always have been and continue to be vital members of the election process not only by our votes but by actually running for and winning offices. We need to reclaim our herstory for our sisters and daughters so that they know it can be done because it has been done and so that they don’t think they are going it alone.

My challenge to anyone reading this during this seemingly endless presidential election cycle is this – name one woman or African American in the 300 year history of presidential politics who made a significant impact and or was on the ballot somewhere in these 50 United States.  I’ll even let you cheat a little if you name one person who fits both categories. Come on, you know they’re out there. We’ve been there all along. Let’s make it known.

Sunday, February 17, 2013

More than a dream

To my friends and/or readers :)

I thought I had posted this but guess I forgot to hit the publish button. However,  it is Black History month and there is some good stuff here, so even though it's not MLK day anymore somehow I don't think he'll mind. 

 My friend Kurt has a pretty good blog called "One step closer - Religion and popular culture." I like him and he usually has some interesting things to say. The following post for Martin Luther King Jr. Day is no exception. Read, ponder and then do something.

Remembering all MLK dreamed for...

The collective national memory concerning Martin Luther King Jr. is often summed up by choice passages from his 1963 “dream” speech, like this one:

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

It is with good intentions that we remember these moments of “dream”, but in doing so we often end up with the false idea that King’s goals have been accomplished.  We point to proof of this by certain observations of our present, perhaps most notably in the fact that an African American president will be inaugurated to his second term on the same day we celebrate King.

Professor and author Fredrick C. Harris reminds us of the fight King was waging by the last year of his life:  a war against the triple evils of racism, poverty and militarism, reflected in a battle for the rights of low-wage garbage workers in Memphis, a movement against the Vietnam War and, nationally, the hope for a second march on Washington, one that would dramatize the plight of America’s poor.

On the Sunday before his death, King gave a sermon at the Washington National Cathedral called “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution.”

In it, King left the nation with a vision of what it would take for real change to come to America:

On March 31st, 1968, using The Book of Revelation's quote "Behold, I make all things new; former things are passed away", King began with a challenge to develop a world perspective:

No individual can live alone, no nation can live alone, and anyone who feels that he can live alone is sleeping through a revolution. The world in which we live is geographically one. The challenge that we face today is to make it one in terms of brotherhood.

Now it is true that the geographical oneness of this age has come into being to a large extent through modern man’s scientific ingenuity. Modern man through his scientific genius has been able to dwarf distance and place time in chains. And our jet planes have compressed into minutes distances that once took weeks and even months. All of this tells us that our world is a neighborhood.

Through our scientific and technological genius, we have made of this world a neighborhood and yet we have not had the ethical commitment to make of it a brotherhood. But somehow, and in some way, we have got to do this. We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools. We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way God’s universe is made; this is the way it is structured.




King then moves to racism.  The vision offered in The Dream speech is far from reached.  He said:




“The disease of racism permeates and poisons a whole body politic. And I can see nothing more urgent than for America to work passionately and unrelentingly—to get rid of the disease of racism.”




Fredrick Harris observes that we are still not yet there, suggesting that, despite steps forward, “We are not a post-racial society, in which race no longer matters. At best, we are a post-racist society — in which formal legal barriers against African Americans and other minorities have been eliminated, but the legacy of those barriers endures.”




Next King spoke about poverty, outlining a planned day of action that never happened due to his assassination:




This is America’s opportunity to help bridge the gulf between the haves and the have-nots. The question is whether America will do it. There is nothing new about poverty. What is new is that we now have the techniques and the resources to get rid of poverty. The real question is whether we have the will.

In a few weeks some of us are coming to Washington to see if the will is still alive or if it is alive in this nation. We are coming to Washington in a Poor People’s Campaign. Yes, we are going to bring the tired, the poor, the huddled masses. We are going to bring those who have known long years of hurt and neglect. We are going to bring those who have come to feel that life is a long and desolate corridor with no exit signs. We are going to bring children and adults and old people, people who have never seen a doctor or a dentist in their lives.

We are not coming to engage in any histrionic gesture. We are not coming to tear up Washington. We are coming to demand that the government address itself to the problem of poverty....

We are coming to ask America to be true to the huge promissory note that it signed years ago. And we are coming to engage in dramatic nonviolent action, to call attention to the gulf between promise and fulfillment; to make the invisible visible.

Why do we do it this way? We do it this way because it is our experience that the nation doesn’t move around questions of genuine equality for the poor and for black people until it is confronted massively, dramatically in terms of direct action.




Finally, King addressed the problem of using violence to solve problems, especially concerning the Vietnam War:

I want to say one other challenge that we face is simply that we must find an alternative to war and bloodshed. Anyone who feels, and there are still a lot of people who feel that way, that war can solve the social problems facing mankind is sleeping through a great revolution....

This is where we are. "Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind,"....

It is no longer a choice, my friends, between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence....

There comes a time when one must take the position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right. I believe today that there is a need for all people of goodwill to come with a massive act of conscience and say in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "We ain’t goin’ study war no more." This is the challenge facing modern man.




Tomorrow, on the day we remember The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., you will surely hear quoted some of the most cherished passages from the “I have a dream” speech.  Know that this does indeed, in the words of Harris, “Convey the spirit of America’s promise and the hope that one day the nation will live up to its creed”.  If we are to get there, we need to  remember all that King dreamed for, and the hope he still had on the Sunday before he was shot and killed.

  “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution,” concluded with these words:

We’re going to win our freedom because both the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of the almighty God are embodied in our echoing demands. And so, however dark it is, however deep the angry feelings are, and however violent explosions are, I can still sing "We Shall Overcome."

We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

We shall overcome because Carlyle is right—"No lie can live forever."

We shall overcome because William Cullen Bryant is right—"Truth, crushed to earth, will rise again."

We shall overcome because James Russell Lowell is right—as we were singing earlier today,

Truth forever on the scaffold,

Wrong forever on the throne.

Yet that scaffold sways the future.

And behind the dim unknown stands God,

Within the shadow keeping watch above his own.

With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair the stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.

Thank God for John, who centuries ago out on a lonely, obscure island called Patmos caught vision of a new Jerusalem descending out of heaven from God, who heard a voice saying, "Behold, I make all things new; former things are passed away."

God grant that we will be participants in this newness and this magnificent development. If we will but do it, we will bring about a new day of justice and brotherhood and peace. And that day the morning stars will sing together and the sons of God will shout for joy.

God bless you.