Sunday, January 17, 2010
Martin Luther King Jr., Domestic Terrorist: This post is dedicated to Barack Obama
"In 2010 we must all reach the difficult conclusion that the presence of Barack Obama requires the absence of Dr. King and that the former is more a system's protective response to the latter than any kind of continuation."
"...I am in Birmingham because injustice is here."
"Each year we pay tribute to a man who in reality ceased to exist long before he was assassinated.By April of 1968 King had become a national pariah. Moderate civil rights leaders became troubled by his stances against wars of aggression in Vietnam and throughout the continent of Africa and Latin America.
The establishment press depicted him as inspiring 'fear' among White House and Justice Department officials for his continued work against structural inequality which they saw as leanings toward 'communism,' 'Leninism' and as being too friendly to the likes of Stokely Carmichael.
In 2010 we must all reach the difficult conclusion that the presence of Barack Obama requires the absence of Dr. King and that the former is more a system's protective response to the latter than any kind of continuation." --Jared Ball, Professor of communication studies, Morgan State University
If Martin Luther King Jr. were alive today, he wouldn't be talking about 'race', he'd be talking about poverty, and endless war.
Indeed, he was starting to do just that, discussing US IMPERIALISM in places like Vietnam, how it affected ALL Americans, and how the money was being spent on war, not ploughshares.... to the detriment of ALL Americans, and global society, for the benefit of a few.
The "Few" were NOT pleased. Dr. King was "Safe" for the White 'moderates' of America compared to Stokely Carmichael, SNCC, and the Black self defense groups springing up throughout the South threatening to take on the KKK and other racist organizatons. These groups consisted of returned/returning Black veterans of America's Imperial wars of the time (Korea and Vietnam), and they WERE deadly serious (Cf. Simon Wendt's "The Spirit and the Shotgun: Armed Resistance and the Struggle for Civil Rights").
Per Wikipedia:
"Many white southern segregationists vilified King; moreover, this speech ("Beyond Vietnam") soured his relationship with many members of the mainstream media. Life magazine called the speech "demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi",[80] and The Washington Post declared that King had "diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people."[84]""...his people"... How... RACIST and DIVISIVE.
Then, despite continual FBI surveillance (and harrassment), Reverend King was assassinated by an alleged 'lone gunman', James Earl Ray ("Ray testified that he did not shoot King to the House Select Committee on Assassinations" [src]), who King's family came to believe was NOT responsible for the shooting.
Today Da Buffalo wants to Re-Present an excerpt of a sermon at the Riverside Church on April 4, 1967 which has come to be called "Beyond Vietnam".
Black Forum records, a subsidiary of Berry Gordy's Motown put it on vinyl, and the Reverend's speech won a Grammy in 1970 for the "Best Spoken Word Recording".
Indeed, all one has to do is replace the references to Vietnam with the words "Iraq" and "Afghanistan" in the speech that follows and you can easily see that, for the most part, we HAVE NOT accomplished, or even (as a nation) attempted to achieve the goals spoken of here by Martin Luther King Jr.
Say AMEN!"Peace and Civil Rights don't mix they say, so this morning I speak to you on this issue because I am determined to take the Gospel seriously..."
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"True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar... ...it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."
Think on that while listening to the Reverend's sermon, as the Obama administration "bails out" the mortgage brokers and financial institutions allowing them to continue paying bonuses to their employees larger than most people in America, or on Earth, earn in their lifetimes, while leaving the mortgage holders, in many cases, homeless, and people who have lost their jobs in the current economic depression with no recourse but soup kitchens and poverty... ...or given an appropriate age, a job in the the US military, as the only available employer, for the Pentagon's DIRTY WARS in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other places not often mentioned in the US media.
[Pop Out Player]
Text of the entire sermon
Real Audio file (.ram) of the entire sermon (41:50 minutes) :
A BIG H/t to Sam Husseini, from whom I gleaned a number of links for this post.
Sam has the last word:
"There is one minor quibble I have with this sermon -- it ends with the lines"And nations will not rise up against nations, neither shall they study war anymore. And I don't know about you, I ain't gonna study war no more."But I think we do need to study war. We need to study war and all its destructiveness in excruciating detail." [src]
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