Martin Luther King, Jr Day

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BZ-02813

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you
but good morning everyone
ah wonderful to see while here it looks like it's a beautiful day outside so i hope will be able to enjoy it can you hear me okay
yes good so mostly what i want to do this morning is we do something from dr king ah
just a few
brief comments i've been i've been studying and teaching
from dr king's works and writing a for a very long time in the context of my my buddhist practice before that ah i had the the privilege of seen him twice ah i was at
the nineteen sixty three march on washington ah with my i was in if he goes in
let's see that was the summer of tenth grade and believe and i was there was all my ah
my close high school friends who were are somewhat radical slash progressive and we took a week
took the bus with a lot of other people down to washington i remember where i was standing
the while dr king was speaking and that he also came and spoke at one of the synagogues in great neck ah i think that was a year or so leader and so i did see him and then kind of the pivotal event of my life
which was participation in the columbia university strike in the spring of nineteen sixty eight was the strike itself followed directly on dr king's assassination and so he figures in that early life
from mind and then more ah in the last period as been as i and all many of us are wrestling with the state of our nation
so what i'm gonna read to you today is from is a relatively late from an excerpt from relatively late a talk by dr king ah it was given in awe at the annual southern christian leadership convention in august of
of nineteen sixty seven which also happens to be around the time that berkley said center was founded just that's just coincidence have been struck my imagination
ah and the talk is entitled where do we go from here
at it's featured in dr king's last book which is also titled where do we go from here and then the subtitle is chaos or community which all of which seems to have
quite on the mark so dr king this dr king is a relatively radical king ah he's
i regret that ah
i have i have a dream has been reduced to a kind of ah
just they you know a feel-good ah
expression or motto and a doctor king with ah with his radical critique of this country and also have ah
a violence in the world ah he he
it's wonderful that he honored by a national holiday and that he i i fear that he's sort of
transform into way a postage stamp character which car is not who he is and this this country as is remarkable ability to par
to create these iconic figures and to defang them or depower this empower them in some way and to me it's it's mind boggling that there's also been a ah ah malcolm x postage stamp you know and and there other figures a john lennon postage stamp who was
identified as an enemy of the state so with that i want to read you from where do we go from here
i'm concerned about a better world i'm concerned about justice i'm concerned about brotherhood i'm concerned about truth and when one is concerned about that one can never advocate violence for through violence you may murderer
a a murderer but you can't murder murder
through violence you may murder a liar but you can't establish truth through violence you may murder a hater
but you can't murder hate through violence darkness cannot put out the darkness only light can do that
and i say to you i have decided to stick with love for i know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind's problems and i'm going to talk about it everywhere i go
i know it is impossible to talk about it in some circles today and i'm not talking about emotional bosh when i talk about love i'm talking about as strong demanding love for i have seen too much heat
i've seen too much hate on the faces of sheriffs in the south i've seen hate on the faces of too many klansmen
ah to want hate myself because every time i see it i know that it does something to their faces and their personalities and i say to myself that he is too great a burden to bear i have decided to love
if you are seeking the highest good i think you can find it through love
i want to say to you as i moved to my conclusion as we talk about where do we go from here that we must honestly face the fact that the movement
must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of american society
there are forty million poor people here so this is ah
fifty three years ago
the forty million poor people here and one day we must ask the question why are there forty million poor people in america
you are raising a question about the economic system about a broader distribution of wealth when you asked that question you begin to question the capitalistic economy and i'm saying that more and more we've got to begin to ask questions about the whole society
we are called upon to help the discouraged beggars his life's marketplace but one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces bettors needs restructuring it means that questions must be raised and you see my friends when you deal with this you bigger
going to ask the question who owns the oil you begin to ask the question who owns the iron ore you begin to ask the question why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that two thirds water
these are words that must be said
now don't think you have me a bind today i'm not talking about communism what i'm talking about as far beyond communism
communism forgets that life is individual capitalism forgets them life as social
and yet in the kingdom of brotherhood has found neither in the faeces of communism nor in the antithesis of capitalism but a higher synthesis
in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both now when i say questioning the whole society it ultimately means coming to see the problem of racism the problem of economic exploitation and the problem of war or
are all tied together
these are the triple evils that are interrelated
so the problem of racism economic exploitation and war
and if you will let me be a preacher just a little bit one day one night a jury came to jesus and he wanted to know what he could do to be saved
jesus didn't get bogged down on an isolated approach of what you shouldn't do jesus didn't say now nickleby miss you must stop lying he didn't say nicodemus you must now you must not commit adultery
he didn't say nicotine you must stop cheating if you're doing that he didn't say nicodemus you must stop drinking liquor if you're doing that he said something altogether different
that if a man will lie he will steal and if a man will steal he will kill so instead of getting bogged down on one thing jesus looked at him and said nicodemus you must be born again
in other words your whole structure must be changed a nation that will keep people in slavery for two hundred forty four years will finger fi them and make them things
and therefore they will exploit them and poor people generally economically and a nation that will exploit economically will have to have foreign investments and everything else and will have to use its military might to protect them and all these problems are tied again
together
what i'm saying today is that we must go from this convention the southern christian leadership convention and say america you must be born again and so i'd include by saying today that we have a desk let us go out with divine dissatisfaction
let us be dissatisfied until america will no longer have a high blood pressure of creeds and anemia of deeds let us be set dissatisfied until the tragic walls that separate the outer city of wealth and comfort from the inner city of poverty and despair
shall be crushed by the battering rams of the forces of justice
let us be dissatisfied until those who live on the outskirts of hope are brought into the metropolis of gailey security
let us be dissatisfied until slums are cast into the junk heaps of history and every family will live in a decent sanitary home
let us be dissatisfied until the dark yesterday's of segregated schools will be transformed into bright tomorrow's of quality integrated education
let us be dissatisfied until integrations that seen as a problem but as an opportunity to participate in the beauty of diversity
let us be dissatisfied until men and women however black they may be will be judged on the basis of the content of their character not on the color of your skin let us be dissatisfied
let us be satisfied until every city hall until from every city hall justice will roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream
let us be dissatisfied when and met will recognize that has be dissatisfied and men will recognize that out of one blood god made all men to dwell upon the face of the earth
and i must confess my friends at the road ahead will not always be smooth there will still be rocky places of frustration and meandering points of bewilderment there will be inevitable setbacks here and there and will be those moments were
the buoyancy of hope will be transformed into the fatigue of despair
our dreams will sometimes be shattered and are ethereal hopes blasted we may again with tear drenched eyes have to stand before the beer have some courageous civil rights worker whose life would be snuffed out by the at a
bloodthirsty mobs but difficult and painful as it is we must walk on in the days ahead with an audacious faith in the future
when our days become dreary with low hovering clouds of despair and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnight's let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe working to pull down gigantic mountains of evil
that is able to make a way out of no way and transformed dark yesterday's into bright tomorrow's let us realize that the ark of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice

so that's what i had to share with you today
hum
and i think
i believe it a tad i don't think it needs any further comment for me ah but perhaps we can talk about this in in small groups so blake are you organizing this okay so
to thank you from turner of you
was on how many people do you think we should have a need to break out group
i'm
what does it matter to you let's say for and kiddo
good people give me a second

do you have any
taking up to have any prompts a verbal problems or questions to ponder for these breakout rooms
hum
i'm not i'm buying time a great that's fine i think that ah
you'll be good to discuss how whatever strikes you can also got think about
how are any of these points ah
can i realize you don't have the text how is any of this
relevant to our situation
today you know particularly as we we go into ha
a transfer of power in this car is government ah
and also to to recognize it just want to say because it's been pointed out minutes hum
the
undercurrents of oppression and inequality that we see him in the present administration are not new
they're not something that just arose with donald trump
they flow through
or
nation's history in different ways and her what's her opportunity to reckon with and transform them
so those are just some some first thoughts and you can talk freely and structured structures are your discussion the way did you want and we'll have group sharing at the end is not necessarily like report back and we don't need no takers just just see what
really arises feeling this in this show