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A World in Crisis: The Message of Martin Luther King
By A. H. Goldberg
Global Research, April 04, 2011
4 April 2011
Url of this article:
https://www.globalresearch.ca/a-world-in-crisis-the-message-of-martin-luther-king/24143

Let’s get right to the point that the “I have a dream” pigeon holing of Dr King the US mainstream media has carried out against him have completely ghettoized this great American in a way that’s a libel of the real Martin Luther King and that distorts history itself by doing so on this anniversary of King’s assassination— worst of all.

If we’re tired of this hot air, we can look at the real King and the one of the US mainstream media has made invisible to begin honoring him. The one we need to see starts here next.

“Our world is sick with war. . .” today as Martin Luther King Jr said in a sermon Christmas Eve 1967 in Atlanta– to honor him all people everywhere should move toward a transformation of this world into one which reflect Dr King’s “Peace on Earth” message of that day as this anniversary of that tragic assassination arrives.

As Easter and this anniversary approaches, those of Dr King’s Christian religion must be especially mindful and see that the “Christmas message of peace on earth and good will to all” no longer “can “be dismissed as the pious dream of some utopian” as Dr King put it.

With the USA now at war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and who knows where else, Dr King’s message is even more important. The USA along with other Western countries are now embarked on extreme military imperialism and taken in by the “deadly Western arrogance” which says that the West “has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them.”

With this in mind, we should seek to get on “the right side of a world revolution” now unfolding which we have as Dr King in his day told us we were on the wrong side of. This will require ” “a radical revolution of values” in the USA. It will mean we will see Western companies have “investing huge sums of money” in the third world “only to take profits out” not caring at all about the “the social betterment” there and we see “This is not just.” We will see the US “alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America” and see that “This is not just.” We will also see that is the case with war and that as Dr King said it “isn’t the answer.”

“A nation that continues year after to spend more on” its war machine than it does on social programs “is approaching spiritual death” as MLK put it in his time. That’s as true and more so today. We could well honor King by reversing that pattern.

But as Dr Kng also said in his time of the Vietnam War that war was and the “war on terror” today is but a symptom as the USA is “on the wrong side of a world revolution.” If this country is going to get on “the right side of” that revolution we will need the “radical revolution of values” already referred to. For we live in “revolutionary times” as Dr King said in his day. People are “rising up” internationally seeking to rid themselves of “systems of exploitation and oppression,” and the West “must support these revolutions.” The West can probably We can though at least support these rebellions with economic, diplomatic, and other actions rather than military ones.

To honor Dr King we’d do well to think outside the boxes which the US mainstream media have constructed for us in that media’s role as echo chambers for US power elties. We will need to have “loyalties which transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation” as King told us if we are to truly honor him by making this a better world for all.

Now we still face a world plagued by war, poverty, racism, and other problems which easily overwhelm any individual. That’s reason enough to do as Dr King advised by internationalizing the struggle with a “non violent direct action movement” and campaign of civil disobedience to meet the challenge of “an international emergency which involves the poor, the dispossessed and the exploited of the whole world,”

To honor Dr King all should be involved in moving this world toward the egalitarian one he envisioned with the recognition that “we are inescapably caught up in a network of mutuality tied together in a single garment of destiny.” “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

The West must see that “the poor countries are poor” because of Western “exploitation” of them through “political and economic colonialism” just as Dr King told all in his day. Then the West must act to provide a major aid to these underdeveloped countries and actually Japan which today is on the brink of a nuclear disaster that may just be unreal and which the West and especially the USA bears a huge responsibility for by pressing Japan to make such heavy use of nuclear power which big US business interests profit from. As Dr King we “just stand idly by and do nothing about this and the problems US polices for US power elites have created in Japan? An answer should come immediately– no. We are the ones who made this disaster inevitable, now we must act to resolve it or at least try.

At home likewise, we must act on behalf of those mired in poverty, hunger, homelessness, and other problems. That should be our moral imperative.

We “can afford this” some power elites will tell us, but they won’t explain how we can afford to subsidize those on Wall Street who robbed us of trillions of taxpayer dollars. If we can afford that then we can tax these jack asses and others like the Wall Street crowd whether in the Pentagon or other places of ill repute and do so to the degree needed to carry out a transformation of this nation.

The “interlocking nature of problems” makes it a must to “internationalize” the struggle. Furthermore, we must do so because no one nation can do it alone.

Toward this end we may find as Dr King said that “the most powerful expressions of non violence may come” from “an international coalition of socially aware forces operating outside government frameworks.” This international coalition may be humanity’s best hope.

Every avenue for transformation and reform should be used to the fullest to deal with these and other problems to honor Dr King. The United Nations, various regional organizations, as well NGOs (non govermental organizatins) and others are needed. in these crises we face.

As Dr King told us in his day, we don’t have much time thus if we fail to act on behalf of all and instead allow ourselves to trod down our current disastrous path on one issue after another we will deserve to go the way of the dinosaurs who couldn’t adapt or evolve.

A H Goldberg is a pseudonym this writer uses on a regular basis. The writer has been an activist in progressive causes since early teens and has been a researcher, journalist with own independent periodical in the I F Stone tradition as well as an essayist, poet, and entrepreneur.

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