On April 4, 1967, at Riverside Church in New York City, Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his "Beyond Vietnam" speech. Following the event, Lyndon B. Johnson ordered the security detail he had placed on King removed. One year later to the day, King was murdered.
Unlike King's widely anthologized "I Have a Dream" speech, "Beyond Vietnam" is less known. Its unpopularity has to do in part with how difficult a job it is for editors sympathetic to the American experiment to cherry-pick inspirationally salient, Hallmark passages that can be read emptied of political potency and neutered of social virulence. The thematic arch of the speech also contributes to its unfortunate obscurity.
On 4/4/67, King's project for civil rights aggressively expanded, and in a sense began to fulfill its logical trajectory. It moves with great courage beyond the specific grievances of the African American community in the United States, bringing together the grievances of peoples of different colors, nationalities, and ethnicities under the banner of class in a capitalistic, profit-driven world. "We [SCLC] were convinced," he tells us, "that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself until the descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear" (King). Here, by implication, his message begins to coalesce around the idea of freeing and saving the soul of the world by loosening the global dispossessed "completely from the shackles they still wear," from the poor in the ghettos of American cities to the peasant farmers of Southeast Asia.
King took heat not merely from certain members of the political elite who were once sympathetic to his cause, but from segments of the African American community itself. He says:
Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: "Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King?" "Why are you joining the voices of dissent?" "Peace and civil rights don't mix," they say. "Aren't you hurting the cause of your people," they ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live. (King)
Obviously, King thought big, and believed genuinely in the largesse afforded by big ideas. The unification of communities with ostensibly singular, disparate grievances that the Occupy Wall Street movement is attempting to do today King began nearly fifty years ago. His project was primarily one of bearing witness and education. By bearing witness to one injustice, what is learned leads the student to the next, and then the next. It was only a matter of time before King became a voice for all communities victimized by racial prejudice, class marginalization, political disfranchisement and ruthless, naked imperialism.
And now, as President Obama announced, King has returned to the national consciousness in the form of a massive, Stonehengesque memorial unveiled yesterday in Washington. But who is the figure we are memorializing? A look at a list of those who sponsored the dedication and construction of the memorial might help clarify, or perhaps muddle matters:
The General Motors Foundation and Chevrolet will serve as Dedication Chair and Dedication Co-Chair is The Tommy Hilfiger Corporate Foundation. Dedication Vice Chairs include Aetna, Boeing, BP, Coca-Cola, Delta Air Lines, GE, MacFarlane Partners, McDonald’s, Salamander Hotels, Travelers, Wal-Mart Stores, and Zoilëmax Foundation. (DedicatetheDream.org)
This unsavory and motley ensemble of corporate sleaze is underway reinventing King by co-opting his historical figure and interpreting his "message."
"We honor Dr. King as a courageous and visionary leader," Jim McNerney, Boeing chairman, president and CEO, said. "He knew that when all people have the freedom to dream big dreams, to be included and respected even during disagreement, to learn, to contribute and to achieve, we strengthen our nation for generations to come" (DedicatetheDream.org). The tremendous irony involved here is dumbfounding. The Boeing Mr. McNerney represents is the same multinational defense corporation responsible for continuing to supply nations with weapons systems that produce the misery and suffering that it was King's purpose to mitigate and end. And Wal-Mart? How exactly do they exemplify King's message? By being anti-union, anti-woman, anti-healthcare, anti-living wage? By selling agricultural products in such abundance and for such low costs that they've effectively killed any kind of local competition? And McDonalds? Give me a break.
And yet these are the companies that control the manner in which the memory of King will be passed down to future generations. He will be King, the rugged individualist, King, the man who advocated freedom for the exact purpose of getting ahead at someone else's expense in the name of sowing your oats in the virgin forests of the world; King the market deregulator, King the occupier of foreign countries, King the moral compass behind national excursions in torture.
Does anybody recognize the great irony in Boeing being allowed anywhere near the memorial project while they profit by the billions in corporate tax breaks and two unwinnable wars; Boeing, the company that makes its bread on the most grossly violent types of conflict resolution? Or the war-profiteer GE, whose CEO Jeffrey Immelt now councils Obama on job creation after having outsourced something like 60 percent of his labor force overseas? How does King's message of nonviolent action and social justice resonate when those companies and the very nation affiliated with his memory habitually act in direct opposition to the man's most cherished values and highest aspirations?
On that day in 1967 at Riverside Church, King discussed the question of how to motivate people to peacefully resolve their conflicts when the leaders of their nation know only the catastrophic language of blood and death:
As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked -- and rightly so -- what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent. (King)
The United States corporate government continues to be the "greatest purveyor of violence in the world today", which is why it makes perfect, perverse sense that in the months leading up to yesterday's memorial dedication the plutocrats successfully hijacked their fiercest critic.
For the entire "Beyond Vietnam" speech, copy and paste the link below:
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm
To checkout two in a series of Boeing commercials honoring MLK, links below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4zGwnipVYI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izSIC7XZ32s
And how about Chevrolet's rendition:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XovR_pgiLsw
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