THE AMERICA THAT COULD BE

From Martin Luther King the Inconvenient Hero by Vincent Harding. Tragic that at a time when the memory of his powerful belief in the power of non violence could help turn this country around his name isn’t even mentioned.

“Who dares recall this man, 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 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 an individualistic religious experience, breaking faith with the Tubmans, the Turners, the Truths, and the Kings (and the King)? Someone.

Who is there when so many of his white comrades now stand back in cynicism, fear, success and puzzlement? Someone.

Who is there when so many of poor (and recently poor) now compete for crumbs across racial and ethnic lines, rather than standing together to 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 who is not afraid to go on exploring, stumbling, trembling, wherever visions 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 may 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?”

*Soviet Union fell over twenty years ago and we’re still being called commies etc.