Remembering MLK, Jr.

In the spirit of the day, I would like to remind everyone that Martin Luther King, Jr. fought for civil rights. Too often the Civil Rights movement is re-defined as a movement for Black rights. That was part of it. That was how the main group was identified. But please believe this movement included Latinos, gays, immigrants, Whites, Asians. This was not a movement only about race. It was not a homogeneous movement to make black=white in the US. It was a social movement to bring all of our rights closer to equilibrium.

With that in mind, I would like to post a few quotations from Rev. MLK, Jr. that mean something to me. I hope you too take something from his words and continue to live your own lives remembering that black and white are not the only labels that exist in this world and the fight for social justice & civil rights continues today.
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"We will never have peace in the world until men everywhere recognize that ends are not cut off from means, because the means represent the ideal in the making, and the end in process. Ultimately, you can't reach good ends through evil means, because the means represent the seed and the end represents the tree."

"Many people fear nothing more terribly than to take a position which stands out sharply and clearly from the prevailing opinion. The tendency of most is to adopt a view that is so ambiguous that it will include everything and so popular that it will include everybody.
Not a few men who cherish lofty and noble ideals hide them under a bushel for fear of being called different."

"A religion true to its nature must also be concerned about man's social conditions....Any religion that professes to be concerned with the souls of men and is not concerned with the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them, and the social conditions that cripple them is a dry-as-dust religion."

"Direct action is not a substitute for work in the courts and the halls of government. Bringing about passage of a new and broad law by a city council, state legislature, or the Congress, or pleading cases before the courts of the land, does not eliminate the necessity for bringing about the mass dramatization of injustice in front of a city hall.
Indeed, direct action and legal action complement one another. When skillfully employed, each becomes more effective."

"I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, quality and freedom for their spirit. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down, other-centered men can build up."


"All too many of those who live in affluent America ignore those who exist in poor America. In doing so, the affluent Americans will eventually have to face themselves with the question that Eichmann chose to ignore: How responsible am I for the well-being of my fellows? To ignore evil is to become an accomplice to it."