beyond vietnam 7 reasons beyond vietnam 7 reasons

Freedom is still the bonus we receive for knowing the truth. endstream Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the One who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? So they go, primarily women and children and the aged. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us. Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. King told reporters on Face the Nation that as a minister he hada prophetic functionand asone greatly concerned about the need for peace in our world and the survival of mankind, I must continue to take a stand on this issue(King, 29 August 1965). King had stepped up his anti-war proclamations on February 25, 1967, when he appeared at a convention in Beverly Hills, California. 2. 1. punished the poor. We must not engage in a negative anticommunism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. I think of them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries. #7 Infrastructure Development. I still think this is probably the best., It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor both black and white through the poverty program. The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. We in the West must support these revolutions. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers. On April 4, 1967, exactly one year before his assassination, Dr. Martin Luther King gave his first major public address on the war in Vietnam at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City. These are the times for real choices and not false ones. xcbd`g`b``8 "Y& D2 IF>E0y6DrLb`] R3XM-c |)f&!ME We have destroyed their land and their crops. Harding recalled in an interview with Tavis Smiley, Free at Last: Martin Luther King Jr. (streaming on THIRTEEN Specials). This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. Regarding choosing Beyond Vietnam for the title when the country was deep in the middle of the war, Harding recalled in an interview with Tavis Smiley, this is more than a simple case of getting out of Vietnam. As we counsel young men concerning military service, we must clarify for them our nations role in Vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection. King, Statement on voter registration in Alabama, 9 March 1965, MLKJP-GAMK. Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. Dr. They will be concerned about Guatemala Guatemala and Peru. How do they judge us when our officials know that their membership is less than twenty-five percent communist, and yet insist on giving them the blanket name? Five: Set a date that we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva Agreement. What must they think of the United States of America when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem, which helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the South? These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. Both the Washington Post and New York Times published editorials criticizing the speech, with the Post noting that Kings speech haddiminished his usefulness to his cause, to his country, and to his peoplethrough a simplistic and flawed view of the situation (A Tragedy,6 April 1967). They illustrate the depth of Dr. King's comprehension that the Civil Rights Movement was a struggle of more than one race in one nation at one point in time. MLK's Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood. Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? by Rick Sterling January 16, 2023. The truth of these words is beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. In Dr. Martin Luther King's speech "Beyond VietnamA Time to Break Silence" (1967), Dr. King asserts that the war in Vietnam is totally immoral and has far reaching negative implications not only for Vietnam, but for The United States and the rest of the World as well. Notably, the economy grew at an average annual rate of 7.5% in 1991-2000 period. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy, and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence " Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence ", also referred as the Riverside Church speech, [1] is an anti-Vietnam War and pro- social justice speech delivered by Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1967, exactly one year before he was assassinated. And finally, as I try to explain for you and for myself the road that leads from Montgomery to this place I would have offered all that was most valid if I simply said that I must be true to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be a son of the living God. With that tragic decision we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination and a government that had been established not by China for whom the Vietnamese have no great love but by clearly indigenous forces that included some communists. I heard him speak so many times. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. They see the children degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nations self-defined goals and positions. JFIF C And the choice goes by forever twixt that darkness and that light. Senator Barry Goldwater (AZ), the Republican Party presidential nominee in 1964, said the speech could border a bit on treason., Civil Rights activist and U.S. Representative John Lewis (GA), who was among the 3,800 in the audience when King gave the speech, told the New Yorker Magazine in 2017 that the speech was a speech for all humanityfor the world community. Though her portions be the scaffold, and upon the throne be wrong Giu 11, 2022 | narcissistic withdrawal. How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of aggression from the North as if there were nothing more essential to the war? Vietnam's Amended Constitution 1992 recognized the role of private sector in the economy. On 4 April 1967 Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his seminal speech at Riverside Church condemning the Vietnam War. King urged insteada radical revolution of valuesemphasizing love and justice rather than economic nationalism (King, Beyond Vietnam,157). In the North, where our bombs now pummel the land, and our mines endanger the waterways, we are met by a deep but understandable mistrust. Kings address emphasized his responsibility to the American people and explained that conversations with young black men in the ghettos reinforced his own commitment to nonviolence. Surely we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence. Fifty years ago in 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr. gave a speech that startled even many of his supporters in the Civil Rights Movement. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: Let us love one another, for love is God. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately, the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horrible, clumsy, and deadly game we have decided to play. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land. King enumerated seven major reasons to bring the war to an end based on moral vision. Rationalizations and the incessant search for scapegoats are the psychological cataracts that blind us to our sins. Meanwhile Meanwhile, we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. Dr. King choose to speak out against the war in Vietnam? After more than a decade in the public eye fighting racism and inequality in America, King plunged himself into another searing, divisive issue in America with his speech, Beyond Vietnam: A. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all men for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? endobj But this encouraging shift does not reflect a seismic corruption case relating to COVID testing kits that came to light in the last days of 2021. aYej{uOAs/9lo-6'j-gy,=F*9bt,Ukj"h jPIL We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways. The only change came from America, as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept, and without popular support. They wander into the hospitals with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one Vietcong-inflicted injury. 56 0 obj On 4 April, accompanied by Amherst College Professor Henry Commager, Union Theological Seminary President John Bennett, and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, at an event sponsored by Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam, King spoke to over 3,000 at New Yorks Riverside Church. #4 New Market. The essence of the speech focused on the war in Vietnam. We must stop now. My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettoes of the North over the last three years especially the last three summers. And of course its always good to come back to Riverside church. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. But they ask and rightly so what about Vietnam? There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. On April 4, 1967, Martin Luther King delivered his first major public statement against the Vietnam War, entitled "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence." Addressing a crowd of 3,000 at Riverside Church in New York City, King condemned the war as anti-democratic, impractical, and unjust. Helping you get here is part of her job. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight. There is at the outset a very obvious and . 'Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence' was delivered by Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1967 at a meeting of concerned clergymen and laity at Riverside Church in New York City, New York (Spence). Martin Luther King had spoken critically about the Vietnam War before, but it was his blistering Beyond Vietnam speech at an event sponsored by Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam that gained wide attention. Recent flashpoints. The speech titled "Beyond Vietnam" is relevant to today's war in Ukraine. By that time the communists and South Vietnamese were already engaged in what journalists labeled the "postwar war.". We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond in compassion, my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? In Dr. Martin Luther King's speech "Beyond VietnamA Time to Break Silence" (1967), Dr. King asserts that the war in Vietnam is totally immoral and has far reaching negative implications not only for Vietnam, but for The United States and the rest of the World as well. At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless in Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called enemy, I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else. Martin Luther King April 4, 1967 Riverside Church, New York City We must provide the medical aid that is badly needed, making it available in this country, if necessary. And yet I swear this oath This is a case of getting out of a certain frame of mind, of a way of thinking about ourselves and about the world.. Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence Jim Meyer 2020, Beyond Vietnam:A Time to Break Silence Abstract "The time has come for America to hear the truth about this tragic war. Here's the essay I wrote in the video: In the speech "Beyond Vietnam - A Time to Break Silence," Dr. Rev. Read on for background on the historic speech, highlights and the speech in in its entirety. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. % King,The Casualties of the War in Vietnam,25 February 1967, CLPAC. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. Become a member of THIRTEEN ($5 monthly or $60 annually) and get access to THIRTEEN Passport as our thanks for your support. The recent statements of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart, and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: A time comes when silence is betrayal. And that time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.