MLK Day 2012

Today as we celebrate what would have been the 83rd birthday of Martin Luther King Jr., there is an African-American in the White House and The Greatest heavyweight boxer of all time is about to turn 70. 

Because of Dr. King's work and those of thousands of lesser known civil rights activists, Barack Obama was able to be elected President of the United States in 2008, something totally inconceivable at the time Martin Luther King began his efforts for social justice and peace more than 50 years ago.  In 1964, MLK was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to end racial segregation and discrimination using civil disobedience and other non-violent methods.  At 35, he was the youngest person ever to receive this Peace Prize.  His efforts culminated in Congress passing and President Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Martin Luther King's opposition to the Vietnam War is less widely known.   As he became more outspoken against the war, he lost the support of some former allies in the struggle for civil rights and his popularity among the American populace began to drop.  Some credit the example of Muhammed Ali who announced his intention to resist induction in 1966 (and subsequently be stripped of his heavyweight crown) with influencing Dr. King to take this more vocal stand against the war.   Muhammed Ali was and is so much more than a boxer.  His former rival, George Foreman, describes Ali in words that have also been applied to Martin Luther King - a prophet, a hero, a revolutionary.  Both King and Ali opposed the Vietnam War on moral grounds and both were ostracized for it.   In the end, history has proven them right. 

Opposition to war still meets with charges of "unpatriotic" or "un-American".  This will never change as long as jingoists, self-styled patriots and militarists can raise the specter of the "other" and strike fear into the minds of the citizenry.  And it won't change until the military-industrial complex's money is taken out of the political system.

A more disturbing trend though is the increasing tendency to blame the victims of social injustice and inequity.  Efforts to ameliorate the damaging effects of poverty and of the Great Recession are met with cries of "income redistribution" and "socialism".  There is an illness, a new meanness in the body politic.  As Tony Judt wrote in his 2010 book, Ill Fares the Land, “As recently as the 1970’s, the idea that the point of life was to get rich and that governments existed to facilitate this would have been ridiculed.”

Couple this with the ongoing Republican attempts to reverse gains in voting rights and this illness may become endemic and long-lasting.  Do we really want a nation where corporations are granted "personhood" and the right to pour unlimited money into the coffers of politicians who will defend their interests while we deny up to 5 million of our "real" citizens the right to vote?

Martin Luther King and Muhammed Ali were true heroes.  They were unafraid to speak truth to power.  We should always do likewise. 

And here's hoping that Obama, in a second term, will be able to fulfill the promise of hope and change that he inspired in us and in the Nobel Peace Prize Committee in 2008.

Links
NPR's "Story behind the "Beyond Vietnam"
"Why I Am Opposed to War in Vietnam" [Excerpts of a Sermon at the Ebenezer Baptist Church on April 30, 1967]
TLBC Oct 31, 2011 post on the organized Republican effort to disenfranchise voters likely to vote Democratic in the next election.  
George Foreman Interview (ShortList, reported in UK Daily Mirror)