Silence is No Longer Golden: Reflections on Dr. King's Speech "Beyond Vietnam"

This morning I woke up to Dr. Martin Luther King’s speech given on April 4, 1967 called “Beyond Vietnam” and I was inspired by his eloquence, his words, his message. I realized that this message is just as important now as it was 40 years ago. What struck me about his speech was how direct it was. It lacked the political “double talk” that is evident today when everyone is so careful about how to say something lest they offend. And to that I say: have the courage to be honest and truthful, to speak directly, to call it as you see it. Let people make the choice to agree or disagree, to join in your struggle or start their own. In these dark times, where our constitution is being constantly diluted and challenged, where a handful of corporations own our media, where the current administration thumbs their noses at the American and International public, where politics has become more and more grossly a road to personal wealth and less of a road to national prosperity, we must offend. We must speak our minds. We have to. As Dr. King referenced, “A time comes when silence is betrayal”. I believe we have reached that time once again.

And I call to the clergy to rise up, to change the belief of the secular public that you are more concerned about whether evolution is taught in schools and instead are angered about the injustices that are happening around you. To change this red/blue divide and unite in your outrage regarding the lack of education for the poor, the problems in our health care system, the rising greed of corporations and their link to our government. In 1967, there appeared to be a shift in focus. Again, I quote the words of Dr. King as spoken at Riverside Church in New York, “And we must rejoice as well for surely this is the first time in our nation’s history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscious and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movement, and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance. For we are deeply in need for a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.”

So, I too, call for a peaceful revolution, a revolution of our value system and current ways. A call to raise our social consciousness and not idly stand by spending our money at Wal-Mart and instead call into question a government that is compounding wealth for a few carefully chosen people via this lie-based war. War, good or bad, used to stimulate an entire economy, now, as we flirt with recession in the US, it appears to just widen the great divide between the super rich and the super poor. It is in this corruption of power that our politics have now been based. This is not a conspiracy theory, it’s not even hidden. When a subsidiary of Halliburton - whose ex CEO is our current Vice President - was awarded a no-bid contract to restore Iraq’s oil industry, where was the outrage? Where was my outrage?

I believe we must all participate in creating an atmosphere of “positive revolution of values”. We must inform ourselves, protest in any peaceful way we choose, “We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative method of protest possible,” stated Dr. King, “These are the times of real choices and not false ones…Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his conviction, but we must all protest.” We don’t have to do everything, but we must do something: write letters to our local and federal government officials, to our corporations, to the press; vote with your dollars whenever you can; demonstrate; inform yourselves; fight for those that don’t have the means; live by example and then choose a method and make your voices heard! Or else all this election year will produce, regardless of what party sits in the presidential seat or controls Congress, is more of the same and we’ll have no one to blame but ourselves and our silence.

If you’re interested in reading Dr. King’s entire speech:
http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/publications/speeches/Beyond_Vietnam.pdf