While I am all for celebrating the life of such an extraordinary human being as Martin Luther King, Jr., I think that in many ways we are missing many of his points amidst all the respectful rememberance and dubious self-congratulation.  In a powerful article on Alternet today, Sean Golzalves quotes a truly prophetic statement from Dr. King:

“We cannot remain silent as our nation engages in one of history’s most cruel and senseless wars. During these days of human travail we must encourage creative dissenters. We need them because the thunder of their fearless voices will be the only sound stronger than the blasts of bombs and the clamor of war hysteria. [1]”

King, among other things (not all completely positive, as Golzalves notes), was an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam war and a Democratic socialist.  He found inspiration for his radicalism and practice of nonviolent resistance to all kinds of oppression in the work of Gandhi and especially in his Christian faith [2].  Another article on Alternet today by Earl Ofari Hutchinson, notes that not everything has gotten easier since the days of King and ‘the civil rights era’.  Today civil rights activists and African-Americans face much different and perhaps more complicated problems.  To those working today, it seems, there was not a ‘civil rights era’ but instead there is an ongoing struggle in an ever-changing country and world.  As has been made clear especially in the last few years with Katrina and other significant events relating to race and class [3], our country still has enormous flaws that should cast doubt on the ideology of constant democratic progress, and the supposedly definitive ‘victories’ of the ‘civil rights era’.  When we turn our attention to international affairs, for instance, can we say that things have gotten any better?  Are we not in another war of aggression based on deception and manipulation by propaganda?  And what about our religious life?  On this, professor Cornel West of Princeton University has written that:

“To put it bluntly, American religious life is losing its prophetic fervor. There is an undeniable decline in the clarity of vision, complexity of understanding and quality of moral action among religious Americans. The rich prophetic legacies of Sojourner Truth, Walter Rauschenbusch, Dorothy Day, Abraham Heschel, and Martin Luther King, Jr., now lay nearly dormant—often forgotten—and the possession of a marginal few. Political and cultural conservatism seems to have silenced most of the prophetic religious voices and tamed the vast majority of churches, temples, synagogues and mosques. Prophetic religion indeed is at the crossroads in present-day America. [4]”

There is something right about this, surely.  The problems that Dr. King and other remarkable people have devoted themselves to for decades are still with us, though they may have a different form and be more or less complicated.  To me, what this indicates is that the struggle to change the world and ourselves for the better is always ongoing.  There is no end to it, and the idea that we can read about and remember Dr. King (as every American should) or protest a little to “solve the problem” is something we should replace with a more realistic vision.  In another post here on BNN I quoted Noam Chomsky, a relentless critic and activist for more than 40 years, on being realistic about our situation and what needs to be continually worked on if we are to see positive change.  Today in celebration of this holiday, I will try to take to heart the words of Dr. King himself:

All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem [5].

- Peter Broady

[1] ”The Casualties of the War in Vietnam”, speech given on February 25, 1967 at the Nation Institute, Los Angeles http://www.aavw.org/special_features/speeches_speech_king02.html

[2] see I May Not Get There With You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr. by Michael Eric Dyson

[3] see Dyson, Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster

[4] Introduction to Prophetic Fragments

[5] ‘Strength to Love’, 1963 

Peter Broady is a regular guy from Wasilla, Alaska, who reads and writes when he gets the chance.  He can be contacted at pbroady@gmail.com or at his current website, http://internationalnv.blogspot.com/