In The Name of Love

MLK Jr Stencil (Originally uploaded by emdot.)

On the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday here are a few thoughts courtesy of an e-mail thread at a friend's very progressive company (props Vera):

“A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”

Written while grooving to the always tasty Groove Salad on SomaFM (yay area!)

“A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, ”This is not just.“ It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, ”This is not just.“ The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just....

”A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.

“This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind....We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. And history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says: 'Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word.'”

From a personal reflection of a senior colleague:

I am not as familiar as Bill or Jennifer with MLK's writing or speeches. However, when worked in the Citywide Testing Office of the Chicago Public Schools, I had a truly transformative experience that was linked to Dr. King. I was visiting schools during the week that was prior to the MLK holiday. I made a visit to an elementary school that was 99% African-American and in the poorest section of the city. Let me share a couple of details about the school. All the windows on the first floor were broken and had been boarded over with plywood. There were armed guards in the hallways. There was no money available for children in Kindergarten, first and second grade to have “pencils” --hence children were learning to write the letters of the alphabet using little, tiny stubs of broken crayons. There were no books (that's right, no books) in the first grade--the books were rolled into the classroom for reading instruction on a cart and then rolled out. It was the first time I had worked with first graders in a US public school that had entered school having never held a book in their own hands. To enter the building, I had to walk around the remains of several dead rats.. At the time of my visit, all teachers and children were convened in the auditorium where they were celebrating the memory of Dr. King. The five and six year olds were about to make their contribution to the program. I stood in the back of the auditorium and listened as these very young, very poor children, stood on stage, “hand-in-hand,” and recited the words of King's “I Have a Dream” speech. Given the condition of their school and their life chances, it was very hard to watch. After the assembly was over, I left the school and understood, more clearly than ever before, what institutional racism looks like. A week after this experience, the mother of one of the children in this school, was murdered on the playground.

We've got to do better for our children and for ourselves. Dr. King's actions and words point the way.