In a February 1968 speech, Dr, King declared: “We have played havoc with the destiny of the world and we have brought the whole world closer to nuclear confrontation . . . I am still convinced that the struggle for peace and the struggle for civil rights as we call it in America happen to be tied together. These two issues are tied together in many, many ways. It is a wonderful thing to work to integrate lunch counters, public accommodations, and schools. But it would be rather absurd to work to get schools and lunch counters integrated and not be concerned with the survival of a world in which to integrate. And I am convinced that these two issues are tied inextricably together and I feel that the people who are working for civil rights are working for peace; I feel that the people working for peace are working for civil rights and justice.”
Exactly one year before his tragic assassination two months later, King stated: “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.”
The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, has picked up Dr. King’s unfinished work, weaving the interlocking injustices of systemic racism, systemic poverty, environmental devastation, militarism and the war economy and a distorted moral narrative of religious nationalism, into one “moral fusion” campaign. The Poor Peoples Campaign Jubilee Platform calls for cutting U.S, military spending by half including by closing 60% of U.S. foreign military bases, ending the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere, and dismantling and eliminating nuclear weapons.
It is increasingly clear that the multiple national and global crises we are confronting, including nuclear weapons, climate change, systemic racism, a growing wealth gap and rising national authoritarianisms arise from the same foundational causes, and that we are unlikely to prevail on any of them as single issues. We need to come together as never before to build political power through durable, diverse, multi-issue coalitions, networks, and networks of networks based on our shared commitments to universal, indivisible human security.
United for Peace & Justice is proud to be a national organizing partner in the Poor People’s Campaign. With active committees in 45 states, and support from an extraordinary range of constituencies including labor unions, faith organizations, racial justice, anti-poverty, environmental and peace groups, the Poor People’s Campaign is building towards a generationally transformative Mass Poor People’s & Low-Wage Worker’s Assembly & Moral March on Washington and to the Polls, June 18, 2022. Get involved. Join your state committee. Find a bus coming to Washington D.C. from your state on June 18!
In the runup to June 18, we are working with the Poor People’s Campaign to organize public participatory readings around the country of Dr, King’s seminal speech, Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence, on April 4, the 54th anniversary of his tragic assassination in 1968. Click here for a downloadable “tool kit” to help you organize a public reading in your community.
