MLK: A Time to Break Silence

[Mass]

http://blog.johnkerry.com/2007/01/mlk_a_time_to_break_silence.html

MLK: A Time to Break Silence
Martin Luther King: Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence





From a speech delivered by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. on 4 April 1967 at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City.

I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. The recent statements of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart, and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: "A time comes when silence is betrayal." And that time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.

The truth of these words is beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.

And 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.


The complete speech is moving and wise beyond its time and can be read in its entirety here.
...

(From the Kerry blog) It is sad to see how his words are still valid so long ago.

[TayTay]

1. What an inspiration.

I know John Kerry listened. This was part of his famous testimony to the SFRC in April of '71.

We found also that all too often American men were dying in those rice paddies for want of support from their allies. We saw first hand how money from American taxes was used for a corrupt dictatorial regime. We saw that many people in this country had a one-sided idea of who was kept free by our flag, as blacks provided the highest percentage of casualties. We saw Vietnam ravaged equally by American bombs as well as by search and destroy missions, as well as by Vietcong terrorism, and yet we listened while this country tried to blame all of the havoc on the Vietcong.

We rationalized destroying villages in order to save them. We saw America lose her sense of morality as she accepted very coolly a My Lai and refused to give up the image of American soldiers who hand out chocolate bars and chewing gum.

We learned the meaning of free fire zones, shooting anything that moves, and we watched while America placed a cheapness on the lives of Orientals.

We watched the U.S. falsification of body counts, in fact the glorification of body counts. We listened while month after month we were told the back of the enemy was about to break. We fought using weapons against "oriental human beings," with quotation marks around that. We fought using weapons against those people which I do not believe this country would dream of using were we fighting in the European theater or let us say a non-third-world people theater, and so we watched while men charged up hills because a general said that hill has to be taken, and after losing one platoon or two platoons they marched away to leave the high for the reoccupation by the North Vietnamese because we watched pride allow the most unimportant of battles to be blown into extravaganzas, because we couldn't lose, and we couldn't retreat, and because it didn't matter how many American bodies were lost to prove that point. And so there were Hamburger Hills and Khe Sanhs and Hill 881's and Fire Base 6's and so many others.

http://www.c-span.org/vote2004/jkerrytestimony.asp

[karynnj]

2. The whole speech is really incredible

April, 1967 was before many people were against the war. (McCarthy and RFK ran in 1968.)

Nice post on the Kerry blog.

[wisteria]

3. Nice post.

I was particularly shaken by these words,



"And 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."

[Inuca]

5. I was going to post almost the exact....

... same thing. "the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony" is an unbelievable phrase. MLK truly had something of the ancient prophets in him. I was not around (meaning not living in the US) during his time, but oh how I wish he had lived longer, so many things could have been different...

[ProSense]

4. Magnificent speech. Excellent post! n/t