Nobody in my family or in my neighborhood used the language that they used at the University of Chicago. I remember the first time I heard the word "value" repeated again and again by my professor. Value to me was the price of a frying pan.
I recall coming across a line by the late Charles Tilly when he said, "The conditions for the possibility of social movements have been called into question in the twenty-first century." And I said to myself, my god, a society in history without social movements, for me, is very difficult to live in.
What is accurately portrayed is the rich humanity not just of Martin Luther King but of the movement, which was a multiracial movement. You had blacks and whites coming together and sacrificing, organizing and mobilizing the world. That's the first time we've had collective action put at the center of any kind of portrayal of Martin King on the screen.
Martin Luther King's legacy is never to be measured by bricks and mortar, but rather by the kind of lives that we live, and the kind of love and service that we render.
Martin Luther King was a victim of surveillance, and had great solidarity with victims of surveillance.
American citizens have been killed abroad by drones with no due process, no accountability, no judicial review.
Wall Street is stronger than ever.
Our problem is that we don't have enough people in America, including black people, who are progressive and willing to sacrifice their popularity in order to tell the truth.
Wealth inequality has increased.
One of the things I love most about Martin Luther King is that he was willing to sacrifice his popularity in favor of his integrity. He was an honest man, and he would tell the truth.
If Martin Luther King looked at the Obama administration and saw an intimate connection with Wall Street, he'd be very critical. If he saw drones being dropped on innocent people, he'd be very critical. If he saw rights and liberties violated by secret policies of the government, of the kind we've seen by the National Security Agency, he'd be very critical.
Martin Luther King would celebrate the symbolic status (of having a black president), but he would examine what the real substance was. And if he saw that poor and working people were not at the center of public policy, he would be deeply, deeply upset.
I think Martin Luther King would always keep track of collective insurgencies among poor and working people. He was concerned about the treatment of Jews in the Soviet Union, for example. He would have closely followed the Arab Spring. And certainly he would be very critical of the massive surveillance state that has emerged in America in the last five to 10 years. He would have approved of the movements trying to gain some accountability in U.S. foreign policy, such as drones being (used) on innocent people. I think he would march against drones.
We live in a world where people are fearful of extremism, but Martin Luther King would say he was always trying to keep the flow of love in place. In that sense, he turned the world on its head.
Martin Luther King was an extremist of love.
It takes unbelievable spiritual courage, moral fortitude, to engage in militant nonviolence.
Martin Luther King wanted to be morally consistent and speak out against various things that were wrong, not just racism.
You don't begin by dehumanizing those who are dehumanizing you, because it contributes to the cycle of dehumanization in the world.
Some people don't want to be morally consistent. They just want to be tied to their one issue.
Once you begin to talk about wealth inequality, especially as it relates to corporations and big banks, or engage in an indictment of U.S. foreign policy, you are really getting at the center of a society that is very fearful of that kind of critique.
Martin Luther King was not a Marxist or a communist, but his radical love leads him to put poor and working people at the center.
Martin Luther King was a radical democrat, by which I mean someone who is a foe of wealth inequality.
Anybody who takes Martin Luther King seriously has got to go beyond the standard understanding of who he was, has to connect those dots.
In the practice of radical love, you are embracing human beings across the board, but you do give a preference - very much like Jesus - to the least of these, to the weak, to the vulnerable. That includes poor whites and poor browns, as well as the poor in black ghettos.
The American Dream is individualistic. Martin Luther King's dream was collective. The American Dream says, "I can engage in upward mobility and live the good life." King's dream was fundamentally Christian. His commitment to radical love had everything to do with his commitment to Jesus of Nazareth, and his dream had everything to do with community, with a "we" consciousness that included poor and working people around the world, not just black people.
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