How strange that a country that has massively failed to contain the spread of a pandemic within its borders, a country that has generally abstained from meeting the immediate material needs of its own people suffering from the economic fallout, and a country currently ambling through a political crises it can scarcely see—let alone comprehend—will pause tomorrow to honor the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.
They call it the MLK National Day of Service, as if to suggest King was assassinated for his subversive message of painting classrooms in segregated, underfunded schools.
But the MLK federal holiday and its granite counterpart on the National Mall are not intended to facilitate remembrance. Instead, like the war memorials that haunt the nation’s capital, they give America permission to forget.
Perhaps this MLK Day happening as the nation speeds toward 400,000 deaths from covid-19 isn’t so strange at all. Perhaps it is altogether fitting that America would perform hollow reverence for King amid countless unemployed, small businesses permanently shuttered and millions of families threatened with eviction—all while the already wealthy have only increased their wealth as Wall Street cheers the longest bull market in history.
Neither the MLK National Day of Service nor the MLK Memorial will tell you that Martin Luther King Jr. advocated for a universal basic income, worked to capitalize Black banks, won contracts for Black businesses and was murdered while supporting a labor strike in Memphis.
King wouldn’t answer the challenges America faces today with charity and volunteerism alone. King would see the chaos all around us and ask: what kind of society would produce this much violence, this much poverty, this much death?
A sermonette King delivered during his presidential address to the 1967 convening of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference has a lesson for all of us today.
A country founded on white supremacy will deploy the military to suppress Black Lives Matter protests and do absolutely nothing to protect U.S. Senators and Representatives from an armed white militia calling for blood.
A country founded on economic exploitation will, with great urgency, create trillions of dollars to prop up Wall Street, while endlessly debating the economic merits of providing a one-time payment of $2,000 to families robbed of their means of making a living.
A country founded on war will successfully wage a national wartime mobilization to beat fascists abroad while being unable to remotely imagine a national peacetime mobilization to fight a global pandemic at home.
We have work to do.
On this MLK weekend 2021, King reminds us this work cuts to the core of every unexamined assumption we have about race, economics and politics. Nothing short of deep, structural change will save this country from slipping further into the abyss.
Excerpt from Where Do We Go From Here?
Martin Luther King Jr.
10th Annual SCLC Convention
August 16, 1967
Atlanta, Georgia
Now, when I say questioning the whole society, it means ultimately coming to see that the problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together. These are the triple evils that are interrelated.
And if you will let me be a preacher just a little bit.
One day, one night, a juror came to Jesus and he wanted to know what he could do to be saved. Jesus didn't get bogged down on the kind of isolated approach of what you shouldn't do.
Jesus didn't say, "Now Nicodemus, you must stop lying."
He didn't say, "Nicodemus, now you must not commit adultery."
He didn't say, "Now Nicodemus, you must stop cheating if you are doing that."
He didn't say, "Nicodemus, you must stop drinking liquor if you are doing that excessively."
He said something altogether different, because Jesus realized something basic: that if a man will lie, he will steal. And if a man will steal, he will kill.
So instead of just getting bogged down on one thing, Jesus looked at him and said, "Nicodemus, you must be born again." In other words, "Your whole structure must be changed."
A nation that will keep people in slavery for 244 years will "thingify" them and make them things. And therefore, they will exploit them and poor people generally economically. And a nation that will exploit economically will have to have foreign investments and everything else, and it will have to use its military might to protect them. All of these problems are tied together.
What I'm saying today is that we must go from this convention and say, "America, you must be born again!"
source: Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project, Stanford University