Tag: Martin Luther King Jr

MLK: From Vietnam To Ukraine

Yesterday was MLK, Jr Day, a Federal holiday, and I did not post this on his special day because I wanted people to remember him for his stellar work with civil rights and my post is about his antiwar stance.

As an antiwar activist his speeches on the cruelty of war were something I held dear.

In April 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered an eloquent and stirring denunciation of the Vietnam war and US militarism. The speech titled “Beyond Vietnam” is relevant to today’s war in Ukraine.

In the speech at Riverside Church, King talked about how the US had supported France in trying to re-colonize Vietnam. He noted, “Before the end of the war we were meeting 80% of the French war costs.”

When France began to despair in the war, “We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war.”

King went on to recall that after the French finally left Vietnam, the United States prevented implementation of the Geneva Accord which would have allowed Ho Chi Minh to unite the divided country. Instead, the US supported its preferred South Vietnamese dictator.

The U.S. has played a similar role in blocking compromise solutions and international agreements to the Ukraine conflict. Following Ukraine protests in February 2014, the European Union negotiated an agreement between President Yanukovich and the opposition to have early new elections. The attitude of lead US official Victoria Nuland was crystallized in her secretly recorded comment, “F*** the EU!.” Despite the agreement, a violent bloody coup led by ultra-nationalist Ukrainians was “midwifed”.

The ultra-nationalist coup government immediately started implementing policies hostile to the Russian speaking citizens of Ukraine. The coup and the new policies provoked the conflicts and resistance which have led to the situation today. The coup and policies were abhorred by a majority of Ukrainians, especially in eastern Ukraine. The Russian speaking Ukrainian citizens of Crimea voted overwhelmingly to secede from Ukraine and re-unify with Russia.

The Minsk Accords of 2014 and 2015 were intended to resolve the conflict by granting some autonomy to the the Russian speaking sections in the eastern Donbass but keeping them within Ukraine. Thanks to the admissions of two prominent former European leaders, Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande, we know that the West and their Ukrainian government puppet never intended to implement the Minsk Agreement.

Like the 1954 Geneva Accords regarding Vietnam, the 2014 and 2015 Minsk Agreements on Ukraine were never implemented because Washington did not want a compromise.

MLK: Beyond Vietnam to Ukraine

His words were not heeded in the 60s and they

are still falling on deaf ears.

History does have a way of repeating itself.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

MLK And War

February is officially Black History month….and MLK.Jr is black history….we all know this giant for his work in civil rights and voting but few Americans know him for the anti-war activist that he was.

As an anti-war activist myself I was most impressed with his speech against the Vietnam War….

This is the speech that I refer to….read and learn…..

Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen:

I need not pause to say how very delighted I am to be here tonight, and how very delighted I am to see you expressing your concern about the issues that will be discussed tonight by turning out in such large numbers. I also want to say that I consider it a great honor to share this program with Dr. Bennett, Dr. Commager, and Rabbi Heschel, and some of the distinguished leaders and personalities of our nation. And of course it’s always good to come back to Riverside church. Over the last eight years, I have had the privilege of preaching here almost every year in that period, and it is always a rich and rewarding experience to come to this great church and this great pulpit.

I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join you in this meeting because I’m in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam. The recent statements of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart, and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: “A time comes when silence is betrayal.” And that time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.

The truth of these words is beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one’s own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexing as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.

And some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation’s history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.

https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm

Sadly his words fell on deaf ears….as anti-war seem to always accomplish.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

MLK, Jr Day

Today we celebrate the life and times of Martin Luther King, Jr a great civil rights activist….as important as that is I remember him more for his opposition to war especially the Vietnam War….a war that I know all too well.

So my post will be about the man and his anti-war thoughts and speeches…..

On July 2, 1964, Martin Luther King Jr. stood behind President Lyndon Baines Johnson as the Texan signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Although not the first civil rights bill passed by Congress, it was the most comprehensive.

King called the law’s passage “a great moment … something like the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation by Abraham Lincoln.” Johnson recognized King’s contributions to the law by gifting him a pen used to sign the historic legislation.

A year later, as Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law, King again joined the president for the occasion.

But by the start of 1967, the two most famous men in America were no longer on speaking terms. In fact, they would not meet again before King fell to an assassin’s bullet on April 4, 1968.

King was foremost a minister who pastored to a local church throughout his career, even while he was doing national civil rights work. And he became concerned that his political ally Johnson was making a grave moral mistake in Vietnam. Johnson quickly escalated American troop presence in Vietnam from 75,000 to 125,000 in 1965. And by 1968, more than a half a million troops were stationed in the Southeast Asian nation.

https://theconversation.com/how-the-vietnam-war-pushed-mlk-to-embrace-global-justice-not-only-civil-rights-at-home-169916

I remember his words and after experiencing war first hand I too became an anti-war activist…..

America is not in the habit of remembering King as an anti-war resister. We prefer to hold him up as a peace lover in a vacuum, a pacifist taken out of context from the time and place in which he lived, in the midst of what he deems to be an unjust war in Vietnam. But in his radical 1967 speech “Beyond Vietnam,” given before a crowd of 3,000 people crammed into New York City’s Riverside Church, the reverend shored up two years of protests into his most comprehensive statement against the war. He called for a worldwide fellowship that moved beyond tribe, race, class and nation, and he condemned a war that sent young black men 8,000 miles to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not yet found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem.

Even as King spoke of the need for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind, he knew that his words would be dismissed as cowardice and weakness. `I am not speaking of some sentimental response,’ he insisted. `I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as a supreme unifying principle of life.’

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php

MLK was a great man and a great civil rights leader but he should also be celebrated for his work as an anti-war activist as well.

Have a great day…..

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

 

What Would MLK Think?

Closing Thought–18Jan21

Today is MLK birthday holiday.

Many have wondered what if he were alive he would think about the division of today and the riot around the Capitol.

First of all MLK was a devout follower of the theory of non-violence in the vein of Gandhi….so he would not condone the events of 06 January in any shape.

This year, America commemorates Martin Luther King Jr.’s life amid a chaotic and shameful time for democracy. Less than two weeks ago, insurrectionists stormed the United States Capitol after they were encouraged to “take back” the country by the sitting US president, holding fast to the false claim of election fraud.

MLK should be a prophet to those that want to protest….

  1. “In spite of temporary victories, violence never brings permanent peace.”
  2. “We adopt the means of nonviolence because our end is a community at peace with itself. We will try to persuade with our words, but if our words fail, we will try to persuade with our acts.”
  3. “Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence, when it helps us to see the enemy’s point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.”
  4. “Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals.”
  5. “Nonviolence is absolute commitment to the way of love. Love is not emotional bash; it is not empty sentimentalism. It is the active outpouring of one’s whole being into the being of another.”
  6. “World peace through nonviolent means is neither absurd nor unattainable. All other methods have failed. Thus we must begin anew. Nonviolence is a good starting point.”
  7. “I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality… I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.”
  8. “I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action.”
  9. “I am convinced that even violent temperaments can be channeled through nonviolent discipline, if they can act constructively and express through an effective channel their very legitimate anger.”
  10. “In the nonviolent army, there is room for everyone who wants to join up. There is no color distinction. There is no examination, no pledge, except that, as a soldier in the armies of violence is expected to inspect his carbine and keep it clean, nonviolent soldiers are called upon to examine their greatest weapons: their heart, their conscience, their courage and sense of justice.”

Learns Stuff!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

During moments of social and political turmoil, we often ask ourselves, what would King do?

Unfortunately, the same forces that motivated the insurrectionists have tried their hardest to water down and whitewash King’s message and legacy. White supremacist ideology motivated the Capitol attack, and it’s this same power that has, in recent years, attempted to mischaracterize King’s words to fit their agenda.

Vice President Mike Pence, for example, has likened Donald Trump to King in an effort to defend Trump’s border wall. “One of my favorite quotes from Dr. King was, ‘Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy,’” Pence said on Face the Nation ahead of MLK Day in 2019. “You think of how he changed America. He inspired us to change through the legislative process, to become a more perfect union.’”

https://www.vox.com/2021/1/18/22233296/martin-luther-king-jr-whitewashed-legacy-and-message

“The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate…Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

 

Death Of MLK, Jr

An important day in American history was basically ignored.  I realize that history is the furthest thing from most people’s minds…..but some of it is just too important….

The virus is sucking all the knowledge out of the days…yesterday we overlooked an important day….a day we should never forget…..the assassination of MLK. Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, an event that sent shock waves reverberating around the world. A Baptist minister and founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), King had led the civil rights movement since the mid-1950s, using a combination of impassioned speeches and nonviolent protests to fight segregation and achieve significant civil rights advances for African Americans. His assassination led to an outpouring of anger among black Americans, as well as a period of national mourning that helped speed the way for an equal housing bill that would be the last significant legislative achievement of the civil rights era.

https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/martin-luther-king-jr-assassination

Further Reading:

https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/assassination-martin-luther-king-jr

This day should never be pushed aside…no matter the crisis….MLK’s memory is too important to the nation to be marginalized for any reason.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Celebrate His Non-Violence But Not His Anti-War

Today is MLK Day….we celebrate his activism for those without a voice….he chose the tactics of Gandhi….those of non-violence…..which is a good thing but if we celebrate those tactics why not then also celebrate is antiwar stance?

US jets bombed villages. US soldiers machine-gunned combatants and civilians. The Vietnam War had hit a fever pitch of death when Martin Luther King Jr. stepped onto the podium at Riverside Church on April 4, 1967, and said, “The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government.”

The speech, “A Time to Break the Silence,” cost him. Newspapers damned him. Friends distanced themselves. President Lyndon Johnson, angered by what he thought was betrayal, reportedly called King, “that goddamn n***** preacher.”

King risked isolation to speak hard truths. The US’s endless war had depleted the money needed to end poverty. The war was in support of a corrupt, authoritarian regime that suppressed a peoples’ desire to be free. The US was poisoned by its militarism; it was not the beacon of democracy but its destroyer.

https://truthout.org/articles/the-us-celebrates-kings-nonviolence-but-not-his-antiwar-politics/

King was a pacifist…… a peace-nik back in those days….he abhorred all forms of violence….and we should embrace his antiwar work if we embrace his non-violence tactics……

And yet many disrespect King by ignoring his work to stop war in all its forms.

If have spoken….so I have written……

Turn The Page!

Closing Thought–04Apr18

Today is the anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.  50 Years ago today……

On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on a balcony outside the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. The 50th anniversary of his death brings with it a wave of headlines and remembrances. Among them: Bells across America will ring 39 times Wednesday night, with each chime signifying a year of King’s short life, reports CNN. The St. Louis Post Dispatch reports bells will toll first at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis at 6:01pm local time—the time King was shot—with the rest of the city and country following. Some of the best coverage:

  • In an excerpt from Redemption: Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Last 31 Hours published in the Guardian, Joseph Rosenbloom delves into King’s 43-minute final speech at the Mason Temple the night before his death. It returned, over and over again, to the topic of death. King recalled the 1958 incident in which a woman stabbed him at a Harlem book signing; doctors had told him that had he sneezed, the knife blade that sat perilously close to his aorta would have ended it all. Telling that story “seemed to transport him into a profound gloom about mortality—his mortality,” writes Rosenbloom, who notes that while King talked about death on many occasions, it was never in such a morose tone. “This night in Memphis, however, he seemed near panic.” The full excerpt explains why.
  • The bullet that took King’s life was fired by James Earl Ray, something that five investigations into King’s death have established. But that hasn’t eliminated the conspiracy theories, with NPR reporting that even some of King’s children have expressed serious doubt that Ray acted alone. NPR gives some reasons why—Ray, who was nabbed at a London airport, recanted his confession, for one, and lawyer William Pepper believed him. NPR has much more here.
  • AL.com has the story of the lawyers originally assigned to Ray’s case, and it has an odd start: They were flown to London to represent “Ramon George Sneyd.” They only learned it was Ray while sitting knee-to-knee in the most secure location they had available: a shower stall.
  • At CNN, John Blake asks “some of the people who knew King best”—an acclaimed biographer, a friend who was with King at the Lorraine Motel, and experts on King’s life—to imagine what the world would be like today had the bullet missed King. He presents four scenarios that he admits “may seem trivial to consider in light of King’s murder. But part of the reason so many people still deeply mourn King a half-century later is not just because of what the world lost—it’s the tantalizing possibility of what more it could have gained.” Read them here
  • CBS News asks the question, “50 years later, where do we stand?” And it gets some big names to answer that and other questions. Read reflections from Gen. Colin Powell, Loretta Lynch, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, California Sen. Kamala Harris, and musician Trombone Shorty here.
  • The AP reprints three stories from its coverage of the assassination. You can read them here.

I still think that the non-violence where it had its place was not the complete answer that MLK thought it would be…..plus churches have turned away from the teachings of MLK….and that could explain the situation of race relations today.

We should always thank MLK for his contributions……

Closing Thought–15Jan18

Today we celebrate the life of Martin Luther king, Jr…..his speeches lead to the Civil Rights Movement that to the freedoms we all have finally given to black people….

This is a forgotten speech of MLK from 1964…….

In a Democracy Now! and Pacifica Radio Archives exclusive, we air a newly discovered recording of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. On December 7, 1964, days before he received the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, King gave a major address in London on segregation, the fight for civil rights and his support for Nelson Mandela and the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. The speech was recorded by Saul Bernstein, who was working as the European correspondent for Pacifica Radio. Bernstein’s recording was recently discovered by Brian DeShazor, director of the Pacifica Radio Archives.

https://www.democracynow.org/2018/1/15/newly_discovered_1964_mlk_speech_on

Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X met only once. On March 26, 1964, the two black leaders were on Capitol Hill, attending Senate debate on the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

King was stepping out of a news conference, when Malcolm X, dressed in an elegant black overcoat and wearing his signature horn-rimmed glasses, greeted him.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/01/14/martin-luther-king-jr-met-malcolm-x-just-once-the-photo-still-haunts-us-with-what-was-lost/

My day is over…..time to relax….see you guys tomorrow……chuq

MLK,Jr Day–2017

Closing Thought–16Jan17

I have been trying for a week to come up with a really good tribute to the man, Martin Luther king, Jr,……I went through a ream of paper taking notes and writing drafts and in all that time I could write the perfect Tribute to a man that means so much to so many….

As a veteran of the Vietnam War I was impressed with his speech against that war and the others to come……

One of the greatest speeches by Martin Luther King, Jr., “A Time to Break Silence,” was delivered at Riverside Church, New York City, on April 4, 1967. It is a statement against war in principle, in the same sense in which King’s “Letter from Birmingham City Jail,” published four years earlier, had been a statement against social injustice in principle. Yet like that extraordinary earlier appeal, “A Time to Break Silence” is also addressed to the evils of a particular time and place. It protests the command and deployment by Lyndon Johnson of almost unlimited violence against the people and the land of Vietnam for the declared purpose of protecting them from the menace of world communism.

(Continue reading…..)

Source: Martin Luther King’s Speech Against the Vietnam War – by David Bromwich

This speech as so many of his talked to the people and the times…..I am sure there are others that meant much to other people…..below is a link to all of his speeches and stuff……

Source: Martin Luther King Speeches – I Have A Dream Speech and other great, famous speeches by Dr. King

This great man deserves all the recognition the country can offer…..he has gone down in history as a great civil rights activist and a great humanitarian.

His memory will live on!

On that note I close down for the day….enjoy your day and be safe…..chuq

Only In Mississippi

I have often said that the state where I live, Mississippi, is the asshole of the country…..it is a cultural wasteland…I have often thought that that “welcome” sign when you enter to state should read…”Welcome to Mississippi….stet your watch back 150 years”……

Today we celebrate the life of the civil rights activist, Martin Luther king, Jr, but a city in the South of Mississippi just had to try and hold on to outdated beliefs……

The city of Biloxi sparked a debate about the holiday honoring the late civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. after announcing on social media that city offices would be closed Monday for “Great Americans Day,” the AP reports. Monday is federally recognized as Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The Sun Herald reports Great Americans Day doesn’t exist as a holiday and is not even recognized by the Mississippi Secretary of State’s Office. However, Biloxi City Council passed an ordinance in 1985 declaring the holiday “Great Americans Day.”

After the Mississippi city defended the holiday reference on Twitter and Facebook, dozens of comments were posted that criticized the move. Mayor Andrew “FoFo” Gilich called for the city to repeal its ordinance and recognize the holiday with the King name. The backlash appears to have worked: On Saturday, the city’s Twitter account posted, “On Monday, before the city’s annual MLK parade, Biloxi will change a decades-old ordinance: It’s MLK Day.” The city’s website says the ordinance will be officially changed at a special meeting of the city council Monday.

So much for the con job of a “new South”…..looks pretty much the same as it has since the 1870’s…..