From the North Carolina Poor Peoples Campaign
On April 4, 1967, exactly one year before his tragic assassination, in his prophetic speech “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence,” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. named the United States Government as the greatest purveyor of violence in the world. In the speech King preaches that nonviolent direct action is our greatest hope and best tool to bring about the changes we seek. King’s speech laid bare the relationship between U.S. wars abroad and the racism and poverty being challenged by the civil rights movement at home.
In this powerful speech Dr, King provides both a diagnosis and a cure that remains fully relevant today. “I am convinced that if we are to get on 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.”
There is no better way to remember Dr. King than in continuing his work for social and economic justice. As he reminded us, "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice". And, as his life's work demonstrates, our commitment justice for all is what bends it.
