25-08-2013, 08:11 PM
Fantastic, Peter.
If you haven't read it already, Robert Shetterly (the potrait artist)'s speech is also good on this:
https://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/31/3521
Praticularly:
And, of course, the full text of the Riverside speech:
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/058.html.
We ought to have a Phillips-like Guatemala radio campaign where we blast this speech over and over again every day on the airwaves.
And MLK quotes one of my own favorite JFK statements: "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
If you haven't read it already, Robert Shetterly (the potrait artist)'s speech is also good on this:
https://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/31/3521
Praticularly:
Quote:"It has always confounded me every year when we celebrate Dr. King's life that no mention is made of [the] Riverside Church speech in the major media. We are always treated to sound bites of the 1963 I Have a Dream speech. That speech's oratory is as powerful as it is non-confrontational. Which is why it is re-played for modern audiences. Dr. King was about confrontation. Non-violence and confrontation, each ennobling and making the other effective. In 1967 he said, "... my country is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today." And he explained how our economic system thrived on exploitation and violence, or, as Emma Goldman put it, "The greatest bulwark of capitalism is militarism." This was probably the most important speech King ever gave and not playing it when we ostensibly honor him, is tantamount to castrating him morally and intellectually. Just as there is a long history of White America castrating black men, there is an equal legacy of Elite America cutting the most important truths of our social prophets out of the history books. We pay homage to King's icon, the cardboard cutout, but not to his strongest beliefs and his most cogent analysis of our problems --- to what vision called forth his courage. And, if we think that he spoke the truth, to censor that truth is to promote a curious kind of segregation. He is segregated, not for the color of his skin, but for the accuracy of his perception, how close to the bone his words cut. We can't bear to hear the sound of truth's knife scraping on hypocrisy's bone."
And, of course, the full text of the Riverside speech:
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/058.html.
We ought to have a Phillips-like Guatemala radio campaign where we blast this speech over and over again every day on the airwaves.
And MLK quotes one of my own favorite JFK statements: "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."