01/18/2021
Shared with me by my friend Butsugen...
MLK edited from “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence,” April 4, 1967
...Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movement, and pray that our inner being may be sensitive to its guidance. For we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.
We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation, for those it calls “enemy.” Speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. Speak for the poor.
If we are to get on to the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores, and thereby speed the day when “every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain.”
We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace and justice throughout the world. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.
We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now.
Now let us begin.
Now let us read dedicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world.
