🧵 Seldom-quoted #MLK: “Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. Even before there were large numbers of Negroes on our shore, the scar of racial hatred had already disfigured colonial society…
From the sixteenth century forward, blood flowed in battles over racial supremacy. We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade…
Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or feel remorse for this shameful episode. Our literature, our films, our drama, our folklore all exalt it…
Our children are still taught to respect the violence which reduced a red-skinned people of an earlier culture into a few fragmented groups herded into impoverished reservations.” #MLK
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*The World House* chapter from #MLK’s last book, ‘Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?’ Here’s an excerpt from that chapter, but I encourage you to read the entire book: beaconbroadside.com/broadside/2010…
“Nonviolence is not sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force which makes for social transformation.” #MLK#NobelPeacePrize
🧵Today I'm remembering my grandmother, Alberta Williams King, who was taken from us prematurely not by old age or disease but a close-range gunshot wound. (1/4)
Six years after my father was assassinated, she was shot and killed while playing The Lord's Prayer on the organ in church. The killer was able to reload his firearm twice killing a total of two people, including my grandmother. (2/4)
I wonder how long Americans will have to live with the trauma and fear of gun violence. I wonder how many more could've been killed that day had the perpetrator chose an assault rifle, or utilized high-capacity magazines similar to those used in recent tragedies. (3/4)
My father with his friend and ally, #ThichNhatHanh, who died this week. I celebrate and honor Thich Nhat Hanh’s life and global influence for peace.
@nytimes: “A prolific author, poet, teacher and peace activist, Thich Nhat Hanh was exiled from Vietnam after opposing the war…
…in the 1960s and became a leading voice in a movement he called “engaged Buddhism,” the application of Buddhist principles to political and social reform.” #ThichNhatHanh#MLK#BelovedCommunity
“His connection with the United States began in the early 1960s, when he studied at Princeton University and later lectured at Cornell and Columbia. He influenced the American peace movement, urging the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to oppose the Vietnam War.” #ThichNhatHanh
“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.”
Tomorrow, there will be people tweeting about my father and #MLKDay who are complicit in, complacent about and/or a part of cultivating some form of injustice.
That’s to be expected, and not just regarding voting legislation.
There will be people who are complicit in bombing children tweeting.
There will be people who are complacent about poverty tweeting.
There will be people who cultivate the Prison Industrial Complex tweeting.
And so on.
Let’s not get caught up in that tomorrow.
Please take some time to study what my father taught about the Triple Evils of Racism, Militarism, and Poverty (Extreme Materialism).
And what he taught about the Beloved Community and Nonviolence.