What would Martin say?

On Jan. 16 our nation will observe the 76th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birth. Since the first national celebration of the holiday on Jan. 20, 1986, many of us have become familiar with his inspiring words against racism. Important as those words are, all those who honor his memory must remember that he was also a strong voice against the Vietnam War and for economic justice.

If he were alive today, what would he say about the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq? Perhaps the best indication is found in the text of his April 4, 1967 speech at the Riverside Church in New York City.

Although he faced criticism from many in the civil rights movement, he began by acknowledging his previous silence on the Vietnam War: “A time comes when silence is betrayal.” He went on to say that 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 conscience and the reading of history.”

Martin Luther King Jr. pointed to the connections between the Vietnam War and the struggle against racism and poverty. Speaking about the way the Vietnam War had squandered the resources needed to fight poverty in the U.S., he said, “A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seems as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor – both black and white – through the poverty program. Then came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war… I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds … in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.”

Today, Dr. King might see the inadequate performance of our government in the recent hurricanes, floods and fires in our country as clear evidence of the harm to low- and middle-income people of all races when far too many of our dollars are flung into the maw of war under the banner of “security” when those funds would have gone a long way in protecting and helping the victims of these events.

Dr. King said, “We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem.” Are we not still offering young people of all races a highly risky road out of poverty and despair? Are we not saying, “There’s no money for you to go to college or get training for a future, unless you put your body on the line”?

Dr. King said we were “bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation’s self-defined goals and positions.” When we see the smashed homes of ordinary Iraqis, see their children and women crying in the rubble, it recalls the terrible devastation our country wrought from the air on Vietnam. King said, “I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted.” We must ask ourselves by what moral justification do we allow our government to once again visit destruction on the homes of others.

I think Dr. King’s heart would be broken to see how little we have learned from that war he struggled with. Today he might still suggest that we need to challenge root causes of violence, among those being “… the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasure that come from the immense profits of overseas investments.” It would pain him to see our returning soldiers, “physically handicapped and psychologically deranged,” something he said “cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love.”

I think he would once again urge us to “worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class and nation.” He would urge us to act, to speak out, to do anything our hearts tell us is true because if we don’t “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.”

There will be an opportunity to participate in a celebration of Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy from from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 15 at the YWCA on Second Street in Bangor.

Karen Tolstrup lives in Old Town.