ALifeConnected

January 15th marked the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He would have been 81 years old this year.

Why was he murdered?  Some of you may have read the transcripts and/or the summary of the 1999 trial brought forward by Dr. King’s family and underreported by the media in which it was proven that “Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated by a conspiracy that included agencies of his own government.”  While I won’t go into details here of the links to government (you may read the summary by Jim Douglas here), I would like to explore with you why Dr. King was a threat to the violent power structure.

It is burned into our collective memory that Dr. King was killed because of racism – this is not true.  He was killed because of classism.  Money.  Yes, it is true, very true, that in the U.S. race has been used as a dividing line and this racism floods across the globe, but the division has been perpetuated for financial gain.  First by enslaving people.  Then by exploiting a working class perpetuated by racism (this extends to sexism).  And all the while race was used as a distraction – to keep the working classes fighting each other rather than joining hands and casting a questioning eye to the mansion on the hill.

Dr. King was pulling back the curtain, exposing the manipulators.  He was assassinated one year to the day after his speaking out against the war on Vietnam.  His speech (and his outspoken stance in the year preceding his death) shone a light on the war – showing us that it was racist and classist – sending poor people (disproportionately people of color) to kill poor people (people of color).

Dr. King had become dangerous to greedy, unethical profiteers (starting with war profiteers) and the cultural elite because he was pointing to the mansion on the hill… and people were beginning to stop what they were doing and look to where he was pointing.

Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon described it better than I can…

“… after passage of civil rights acts in 1964 and 1965, King began challenging the nation’s fundamental priorities. He maintained that civil rights laws were empty without “human rights” — including economic rights. For people too poor to eat at a restaurant or afford a decent home, King said, anti-discrimination laws were hollow.

Noting that a majority of Americans below the poverty line were white, King developed a class perspective. He decried the huge income gaps between rich and poor, and called for “radical changes in the structure of our society” to redistribute wealth and power.

“True compassion,” King declared, “is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”

By 1967, King had also become the country’s most prominent opponent of the Vietnam War, and a staunch critic of overall U.S. foreign policy, which he deemed militaristic. In his “Beyond Vietnam” speech delivered at New York’s Riverside Church on April 4, 1967 — a year to the day before he was murdered — King called the United States “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”

From Vietnam to South Africa to Latin America, King said, the U.S. was “on the wrong side of a world revolution.” King questioned “our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America,” and asked why the U.S. was suppressing revolutions “of the shirtless and barefoot people” in the Third World, instead of supporting them.

In foreign policy, King also offered an economic critique, complaining about “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.”

You haven’t heard the “Beyond Vietnam” speech on network news retrospectives, but national media heard it loud and clear back in 1967 — and loudly denounced it. Life magazine called it “demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi.” The Washington Post patronized that “King has diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people.”

In his last months, King was organizing the most militant project of his life: the Poor People’s Campaign. He crisscrossed the country to assemble “a multiracial army of the poor” that would descend on Washington — engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience at the Capitol, if need be — until Congress enacted a poor people’s bill of rights. Reader’s Digest warned of an “insurrection.”

King’s economic bill of rights called for massive government jobs programs to rebuild America’s cities. He saw a crying need to confront a Congress that had demonstrated its “hostility to the poor” — appropriating “military funds with alacrity and generosity,” but providing “poverty funds with miserliness.”

When I do speaking engagements, I often ask how many believe that giant corporations have too much control over government and over our lives.  Almost every hand in the auditoriums goes up.  We understand that things are out of control.  “Why do these corporations have so much power?” I ask.  “Because they have all the money!” comes the resounding reply.  That’s right, they can buy politicians, they can buy policy, they can buy countries, they can even buy us (it’s called advertising… and it works). “And where do they get all the money?”… A hush of recognition and a bit of squirming in the seats.  I draw the pointing finger back to myself, “Us,” I say and the audience nods solemnly.

This is one of the challenges of Nonviolence – to recognize the role we, ourselves, play in the violence and oppression and then to do what it takes to stop playing along.  Every dollar is a vote, whether you spend it or you don’t.  Give ONLY to those who support your values.  This is how we’ll build a society reflective of our values.  It starts with you.

Thank you for being part of this revolution.  And thank you for all that you do.

:) matt

This is a video of what I think is the most powerful and accurate speech about what war is really about since Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his speech in 1967 on the racist/classist nature of the Vietnam war.  Many believe MLK’s “Beyond Vietnam” speech given exactly one year to the day before his assassination was the keystone speech leading to his murder.  Dr. King pointed out that the war wasn’t about ideology, it was about greed — and that we were being fooled into feeding the greed of the super-elite (the “war and rebuilding” profiteers) by illusions of separateness — that we were fighting each other in the streets over racism when the enemy was violence itself and those who profit from it.

Listen and be inspired — be inspired not only about the truth of the message and its call to all of us to take personal responsibility, but for the overriding message to carry this personal responsibility into EVERYTHING we do.  War, the destruction of the planet, cruelty to animals, the trampling of human rights, these are all being driven by greed.  The tools of public manipulation to feed that greed are the same — the illusion of disconnection.  Whether we’re fooled and corrupted by racism, classism, speciesism, or militarism — the illusion of separateness fuels violence.

The other key point of this speech (and of Dr. King’s speech… and of Nonviolence United for that matter) is that of the nature of power.  Power isn’t taken from us; it is given by us.  The state of the world isn’t being done TO us; it is being done BY us.  The power is in OUR hands.  We can refuse to obey, refuse to be submissive, refuse to be oppressive, and refuse to support violent industries (including war).  WE have the power and NO ONE can force us to be part of violence, injustice, and cruelty.

Your fellow humans are not the enemy.  The enemy is violence.  Refuse to be a part of it in any way.  Reconnect with YOUR true values of kindness, justice, and compassion and refuse to hurt other people, the planet, and animals.  The power is in your hands.  We’re all in this together.

All one,

:) matt

Nonviolence United explains Nonviolence as connection; whereas violence is disconnection. This is fundamental to what is taught by the heroes of Nonviolence.

Mohandas Gandhi taught a continual search for the truth – to connect while eliminating disconnection (lies, propaganda, personal disconnection of choices and their effects).

Cesar Chavez taught us that when we buy consciously and live our lives consistently with our values we can build a fair society – connection of our choices and their effects can build a society reflective of those values; disconnection builds a schizophrenic society that doesn’t reflect, respect or uphold our values.

Thich Nhat Hanh teaches us of “interbeing”– that everyone and everything is connected; how even a piece of paper holds the soil, the tree, the sky, the clouds and the rain that gave birth to it.

And Martin Luther King, Jr. taught us of how the disconnection from how we waste our resources on hate, militarism and materialism rather than on uplifting humanity is limiting our true potential.

You’ll also hear from the masters of Nonviolence their call for love. As Thich Nhat Hanh puts it, “Love is the essence (the core, the heart) of Nonviolence.” But what is love? How can we love our enemies when they cause us so much pain?

Love in the tradition of Nonviolence doesn’t mean acceptance of an opponent. It doesn’t even mean you have to like your opponent. Love means connecting to the potential of your opponent. Love means seeing yourself in your opponent.

We each may remember a time when we were not who we are now. If you sat down and had a conversation with your past self about issues now important to you, you might not even like that person. If that person was in front of you today, you might even see that person as an opponent. But what if you hate or dismiss or even hurt that person? Will that person have the opportunity to reach their potential? How might you help? Think of how much more powerful it would be to recognize the potential for good in that opponent, to foster their potential and to offer a hand in their reaching that potential. That is love.

We hope you’ll take the time to read Martin Luther King’s sermon on peace. Here is an excerpt:

“… the Greek language has another word for love, and that is the word “agape.” Agape is more than romantic love, it is more than friendship. Agape is understanding, creative, redemptive good will toward all men. Agape is an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return. Theologians would say that it is the love of God operating in the human heart.

When you rise to love on this level, you love all men not because you like them, not because their ways appeal to you, but you love them because God loves them. This is what Jesus meant when he said, “Love your enemies.” And I’m happy that he didn’t say, “Like your enemies,” because there are some people that I find it pretty difficult to like. Liking is an affectionate emotion, and I can’t like anybody who would bomb my home. I can’t like anybody who would exploit me. I can’t like anybody who would trample over me with injustices. I can’t like them. I can’t like anybody who threatens to kill me day in and day out. But Jesus reminds us that love is greater than liking.

Love is understanding, creative, redemptive good will toward all men. And I think this is where we are, as a people, in our struggle for racial justice. We can’t ever give up. We must work passionately and unrelentingly for first-class citizenship. We must never let up in our determination to remove every vestige of segregation and discrimination from our nation, but we shall not in the process relinquish our privilege to love.

I’ve seen too much hate to want to hate, myself, and I’ve seen hate on the faces of too many sheriffs, too many white citizens’ councilors, and too many Klansmen of the South to want to hate, myself; and every time I see it, I say to myself, hate is too great a burden to bear. Somehow we must be able to stand up before our most bitter opponents and say: “We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will and we will still love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws and abide by the unjust system, because non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good, and so throw us in jail and we will still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and, as difficult as it is, we will still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities at the midnight hour and drag us out on some wayside road and leave us half-dead as you beat us, and we will still love you. Send your propaganda agents around the country, and make it appear that we are not fit, culturally and otherwise, for integration, and we’ll still love you. But be assured that we’ll wear you down by our capacity to suffer, and one day we will win our freedom. We will not only win freedom for ourselves; we will so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process… and our victory will be a double victory.”

Read the rest of Dr. King’s sermon here.

I watch this video again and again. And I learn something every time. Martin Luther King, Jr. does a wonderful job of explaining part of the philosophy of Nonviolence. He also reminds us of the importance of training, self-discipline, and courage.

Enjoy!

- matt