I was honored to be one of the speakers today at the observation of the anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, held at the Independence Hall Mall in Philadelphia. Ours was one of the many national actions held today. As a mother of a fallen soldier I have leaned on the wisdom of Dr King to seek nonviolent solutions and to try to create justice in this country. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to share my remarks.
I am a member of Gold Star Families Speak Out, the mother of Sgt Sherwood Baker who was killed on April 26 2004 – the first Pa national guards man killed in combat since 1945- he was killed in an explosion in Baghdad as he was looking for the weapons of mass destruction, long after every one knew that they never did exist.
My son left behind a wife and son and a family who loved him dearly. We vowed in his memory to do everything we could to bring this war to an end, and to speak the truth for Sherwood Baker, to speak of the injustice of this war.
Sherwood was a big bighearted guy, a teacher and social worker, and a great admirer of Dr Martin Luther King- Sherwood was so outraged that his son's school district in upstate PA did not observe Martin Luther King day that he wrote letters to the newspaper and petitioned the school board to make it a holiday. Sher said we as a nation had much to learn from Dr king. So at his funeral we read this passage from Dr King.
“We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.”
This decade of war has pulled the threads of that garment for families, – in this country in Iraq, in Afghanistan and now Libya.
That garment of destiny that we all share brings us to this day, this observation of the assassination of Dr King only a year after his powerful speech condemning the war in Vietnam. I wonder how many people think about the path Dr King was on when he met his destiny?
In far too many ways, in our American culture, Martin Luther King has become sanitized, diminished and put on a safe shelf to be pulled out once a year in January for ceremony and a day of service. Dr King was just as radical as the forces opposed to him said he was. He insisted all people should be included as equal citizens, he saw through the hoax and hypocrisy of the Vietnam war and dared to oppose it when everyone told him it was political suicide, he wanted economic power for the disenfranchised and impoverished, and lest we forget that he was killed in Memphis where he went to support striking sanitation workers.
By far- his most radical revolutionary idea was that all these goals could be obtained through nonviolent action, through standing up and speaking truth to power, by not participating in in activities that are immoral even if that meant going to jail or facing dogs and water cannons or being scorned by the politicians who wanted to play the game safely.
Dr King spoke in his time and today when he said-
“A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in , Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." One could only imagine what he would say today to the intentional degradation of the American worker in the past decade. One can only imagine what his message to the champions of greed and excess of the United States would be. “This is not just” we all know that.
“It is not just” -to take bargaining rights from workers who have struggled for generations to reach a safe standard of living. I can not understand why it is suddenly seen as greedy to lead a middle class life – to want good education for your children, health care for your family and a secure and peaceful retirement, how did that become greedy and excessive? It is not just - that the leaders of this country want our people to go backwards,
Who benefits from the dissolution of the American middle class?
Who benefits from the continuation of endless wars in the middle east? Who benefits from a fractured environment? Who benefits from pitting people with health insurance against those who do not have it? Who benefits from equating the tax structure of billionaires to a family working three jobs to pay the mortgage?
We need to answer those questions because -It is not just –
"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death". So I would ask today have we reached spiritual death yet, has our nation extinguished its own moral flame?
“I'll stick with love Dr King said- hate is too great a burden to bear. “ and I would urge each of us to stick with the hope of the human will to overcome its own worst instincts. Listen again to what the great revolutionary leader said to us-
"We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.”
Those are directions for freedom Each of us is a weaver of that garment of destiny – each of us has the power to weave justice for this country and the world. We do not have the luxury to give in to despair and give up- Dr King called us to use our power to create a new garment of destiny. We can. We can Peace be with you- thank you
April 4, 2011
Independence Hall