Today is the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination. I cried this morning hearing his voice on the radio. His voice, his words, represented defiance, challenge, hope, change, the possibility of a better place, a more just place, and he spoke of it so convincingly it almost seemed possible. They shot him in the face, i didn’t know that until today, they shot his face, his blackness, his defiance, his hope, it was in his face. I say they, even though the murder is attributed to James Earl Ray, because it feels like they. It feels like the nation allowed him to be killed, and that we allow others like him all over the world who were and are defiant, who dare to speak of a more just place, we condemn them to stand alone, to be our heroes, our heroines, our martyrs, while we cheer them on in the protests, community meetings, conferences, and elections. We may not all be as eloquent as Martin Luther King jr., but if we don’t all speak, if we leave the speaking to the few that sound the best, those who are the most convincing, then we are sentencing them to be targets. Targets for psychotic racists who think they are ridding the world of evil and crave infamy, and paternalistic Governments that want to maintain dominance over their unruly children, and corporations and NGO’s that have substantial investment in keeping the world unjust.
