Funny, I thought I posted this yesterday. I even put a link
on Facebook. This morning it was kaput, gone, down the black hole. So, here we
go again.
This is an excerpt from the conclusion of Vincent Harding’s
essay The Inconvenient Hero found in his collection Martin Luther King: The Inconvenient Hero.
This essay collection was originally published in 1996. The
echoes of the fall of the Soviet Union were
still reverberating. If he had revised the essay for the second edition he
probably could have used manipulated anti terrorism and it would mean pretty much
the same thing.
1996 the videogame industry was just taking off and “Reality
TV” was a nightmare waiting to be born.
The so called Free Trade Agreement treaties were just being
negotiated and signed. Beware when anyone in any government or corporate
position tries to pat you on the head and tell you not to worry your little
head about the details; it’ll all work out.
And the toxic hyper individualism pushed by the likes of the
Ryans and Santorums was just beginning to send out its poisonous tendrils.
Harding really catches the cadence of the spoken word in the
written word. If you can get away with it try reading it out loud. And Mr.
Harding goes in the neglected Wordsmith column.
“Who dares recall the man when, when all the plagues he
fought are still among us, standing in the way of the “America we hope to be”: poverty and
exploitation, racism, militarism, materialism, manipulated anticommunism? How
shall we recall him when the America
which has been is still protected and justified by Bible quoting presidents and
supine legislators who offer no visionary leadership to a spiritually crippled
people?
Who dare rededicate themselves to the causes of this hero?
Who is there now when major portions of his black middle class have made their
peace, found equal opportunity in the America that is? Someone.
Who is there now when the overwhelming experience of the
black church is still focused on the individualistic religious experience,
breaking faith with the Tubmans, the Turners, the Truths, and the Kings (and
the King)/? Someone.
Who is there now when so many Black youth in whom the fire
once burned are now being cooled out by drugs, by jail, by military lies, by
poisoned cultural opium in music and on screens, and by big money for small
games? Someone.
Who is there when so many of his white comrades now stand by
in cynicism, success, fear, and puzzlement? Someone.
Who is there when the poor (and the recently poor) now
compete for crumbs across racial and ethnic lines, rather than standing
together in vision, to pray, to recollect, to plan, to struggle? Someone.
Who stands with a hero who insists on living for the broken
and exploited, Who refuses to deny
nightmares, who still will not let dreams die, and is not afraid to go on
exploring, trembling, stumbling wherever dreams lead him? Someone.
Who will open the door for the children, to let them see
him, feel him, as he was, to recall him as he is, perhaps to expose their hungry,
directionless lives to the flaming vector of his passion for the poor? Someone.
Is he safely dead? Perhaps we should recall him and see. Now.
Perhaps in the process we learn again
how to live – unsafely, in love with God and neighbor, with cleansing,
purifying fire, with the America
that is yet to be created – by us.
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