Martin Luther King, Jr., The Trumpet of Conscience

[G_j]

"In honor of the upcoming
Martin Luther King
holiday on January 17,
CodePink has produced an inspiring
internet flash movie
that reveals just how out-of-sync the White House is with Dr. King's message of peace and love. You can view it by visiting

http://www.codepinkalert.org.

Dr. King was not only a champion for civil rights, but also a stalwart defender of peace and social justice. The flash movie features excerpts from Dr. King's April 4, 1967 speech at Riverside Church in New York City and overlays his words with images from the Vietnam War and the current Iraq War. A loop of a Tupac Shakur song provides a musical background. Over images of war abroad and poverty at home, Dr. King's voice tells viewers:"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."

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Many consider this to be MLK's most powerful and important speech, here it is in it's entirety:

BEYOND VIETNAM
April 4, 1967, Riverside Church, NYC

read or listen:
http://www.aavw.org/special_features/speeches_speech_king01.html


---------------------
A wonderful collection of quotes by Martin Luther King, Jr. from his many speeches.
http://www.mlkonline.net/

Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam.
I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak
for the poor in America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I
speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the
leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.

Martin Luther King, Jr., The Trumpet of Conscience, 1967.


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., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.


The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not
revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of
futility.

Martin Luther King, Jr., The Trumpet of Conscience, 1967.


Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time: the need for man to overcome oppression and
violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge,
aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Stockholm, Sweden, December 11, 1964.


Man was born into barbarism when killing his fellow man was a normal condition of existence. He became endowed with a
conscience. And he has now reached the day when violence toward another human being must become as abhorrent as eating
another's flesh.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Why We Can't Wait, 1963.


The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of
civilization, when men ate each other because they had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume the abundant
animal life around them. The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.


It is necessary to understand that Black Power is a cry of disappointment. The Black Power slogan did not spring full grown
from the head of some philosophical Zeus. It was born from the wounds of despair and disappointment. It is a cry of daily hurt
and persistent pain.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.


Discrimination is a hellhound that gnaws at Negroes in every waking moment of their lives to remind them that the lie of their
inferiority is accepted as truth in the society dominating them.

Martin Luther King, Jr., speech, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Atlanta, Georgia, August 16, 1967.


When we ask Negroes to abide by the law, let us also declare that the white man does not abide by law in the ghettos. Day in
and day out he violates welfare laws to deprive the poor of their meager allotments; he flagrantly violates building codes and
regulations; his police make a mockery of law; he violates laws on equal employment and education and the provisions of civil
services. The slums are the handiwork of a vicious system of the white society; Negroes live in them, but they do not make
them, any more than a prisoner makes a prison.

Martin Luther King, Jr., The Trumpet of Conscience, 1967.

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty
important.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Wall Street Journal, November 13, 1962.


Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies
hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction....The chain reaction
of evil--hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars--must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of
annihilation.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength To Love, 1963.


Success, recognition, and conformity are the bywords of the modern world where everyone seems to crave the anesthetizing
security of being identified with the majority.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love, 1963.

Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values
and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false
and the false with the true.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength To Love, 1963.


Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love, 1963.

I am aware that there are many who wince at a distinction between property and persons--who hold both sacrosanct. My
views are not so rigid. A life is sacred. Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and
respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on; it is not man.

Martin Luther King, Jr., The Trumpet of Conscience, 1967.


The bombs in Vietnam explode at home; they destroy the hopes and possibilities for a decent America.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.

[stlsaxman]

1. Thank you! Much needed words from a holy man...

in these troubled times.

[quiet.american]

2. Thanks for posting these great words of MLK

Reading through them is like stepping into the path of a soothing zephyr of reason, intelligence, maturity, wisdom, and true spiritual expression.

[G_j]

3. yes, a breath of fresh air

an uncompromising courage, wisdom and passion sorely needed today..

[peace4all]

4. Happy Birthday friend!

:toast:

[Justpat]

5. A couple of my favorites......

"The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming
their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so
carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize
tht in the process they are incurring deep psychological and politcal
defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and
militarism." MLK April 1967


"True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it
comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring." 1967


These were from a speech he gave in 1967, on April 4, one year before his death.

[G_j]

12. these are from the "Beyond Vietnem" speech

a speech that is as important for people to hear today as it was then, perhaps even more so.

listen/read:
http://www.aavw.org/special_features/speeches_speech_king01.html

[H2O Man]

13. The first part you quote

is a wonderful part of the speech. However, it is King quoting a Buddhist leader. King was moving in the direction of international unity with those of other religions. The significance of his taking up the internationalization of "human rights" -- rather than being limited, as it were, by the domestic definitions of "civil rights," is of great importance. One remembers that Malcolm X was killed about a year after he began taking this same course, including his advocating that the UN have hearings on the racial violence & oppression occuring within the USA. There is a greater relationship between the two men than many realize.

[journalist3072]

6. Dr. King

When I think of Dr. King, and all of the others who provided their leadership during the Civil Rights Movement, I think of incredible gift they gave to my generation. They gave us the gifts of courage, freedom, and so much more.

And so I ask myself: what will be the gift that my generation leaves the next generation? When the next generation reads about the struggle for electoral reform, and when they read about what happened in Florida and Ohio, what will they say? Will they say that my generation lacked the courage or the will to speak out in favor of voting rights?

We need to ask ourselves what gift we will leave the next generation.

Happy Birthday, and thank you for the gift, Dr. King!!

[G_j]

7. good question

We are having problems on all fronts.
We couldn't stop more war atrocities and civil/voting rights have been severely compromised.

many have tried their very best though, & we haven't forgotten

[G_j]

8. The Flash movie is Wonderful, here

is the direct link to the CodePink produced Flash.
It is well worth watching and passing on.

http://www.bushflash.com/mlk2005.html

[journalist3072]

9. My favorite quote from Dr. King

It rings so true today:

Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question,'Is it politic?' But conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but because conscience tells one it is right.

[Tinoire]

10. Add this one... From his last Presidential Address to the SCLC

Where do we go from here?
Martin Luther King, Jr., SCLC Presidential Address,
16 August 1967


(snip)

...as we talk about Where do we go from here, that we honestly face the fact that the movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society. There are forty million poor people here. And one day we must ask the question, Why are there forty million poor people in America? And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I'm simply saying that more and more, we've got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life's marketplace. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. It means that questions must be raised. You see, my friends, when you deal with this, you begin to ask the question, Who owns the oil? You begin to ask the question, Who owns the iron ore? You begin to ask the question, Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that is two-thirds water? These are questions that must be asked.

Now, don't think that you have me in a bind today. I'm not talkingabout communism.

What I'm saying to you this morning is that communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both. Now, when I say question the whole society, it means ultimately coming to see that the problem of racism, the problem of exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together. These are the triple evils that are interrelated.

If you will let me be a preacher just a little bit -- One night, a juror came to Jesus and he wanted to know what he could do to be saved. Jesus didn't get bogged down in the kind of isolated approach of what he shouldn't do. Jesus didn't say, Now Nicodemus, you must stop lying. He didn't say, Nicodemus, you must stop cheating if you are doing that. He didn't say, Nicodemus, you must not commit adultery. He didn't say, Nicodemus, now you must stop drinking liquor if you are doing that excessively. He said something altogether different, because Jesus realized something basic -- that if a man will lie, he will steal. And if a man will steal, he will kill. So instead of just getting bogged down in one thing, Jesus looked at him and said, Nicodemus, you must be born again.

He said, in other words, Your whole structure must be changed. A nation that will keep people in slavery for 244 years will thingify them -- make them things. Therefore they will exploit them, and poor people generally, economically. And a nation that will exploit economically will have foreign investments and everything else, and will ahve to use its military to protect them. All of these problems are tied together.

What I am saying today is that we must go from this convention and say, America, you must be born again!

(snip)

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/062.html for the entire speech

[Guaranteed]

11. I named one of my two cats after him.

Funny story...was at the vet with a stray Siamese kitten I had picked up as my own. I told the vet assistant that I hadn't found a name for him yet. So, she picked him up in her arms, held him up to get a good look at him, and said, "Hmmm...well, what holidays are coming up? There's Valentine's Day....we could name you Cupid...." (this was early January)...

I responded, "Well, Martin Luther King, Jr's birthday is mighty close....how about Luther?" And Luther it was.

Thank you for everything, Martin. You were one of the truest Americans ever. A perfect role model.

Thank you.

:hug: