"These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest." - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Beyond Vietnam address delivered at Riverside Church to the Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam, in New York City. April 4th, 1967.
We remember Dr. King today as a civil rights leader - a man who stood at the head of a movement whose aim it was to remind a forgetful America that its lofty promises applied equally to all, regardless of their skin color or personal wealth. Many speeches will be given today about that movement, its successes and its failures, its gains and its losses. America forty years after King has her first black president, but her public schools are more segregated today than they were in 1954.
I wish to invoke the words of Dr. King to remind ourselves of other labors that he called us to that are likewise unfinished. In his Beyond Vietnam speech, given to the "Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam", he called us to not only end an imperial American war there, but also to look deep within the soul of America and confront the thirst for empire that veils itself with the rhetoric of republic.
"The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality, we will find ourselves organizing 'clergy and laymen concerned' committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy. So such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God....
"A true revolution of values will lay hand 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 the veins of peoples 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."
I invite you to spend a short part of this holiday in honor of Dr. King listening to his words that day in order to understand his call to action.
May 2010 be the year that each of us of humane convictions dedicates ourselves to the pursuits of peace, justice, and resolving America's unfinished business.
Yours in Peace,
Jake Schlachter
Executive Director, Dayton International Peace Museum
http://www.daytonpeacemuseum.org
director@daytonpeacemuseum.org
