The March On Washington Letter From Birmingham Inspiration

I rehearsed a bit, just to be clear about the words. The clarity of the words is amazing.

My part in the Letter From Birmingham reading, at Linn Benton Community College on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday, was late in the address, but it was powerful:

18. RON BORST

It is true that the police have exercised a degree of discipline in handling the demonstrators. In this sense they have conducted themselves rather "nonviolently" in public. But for what purpose? To preserve the evil system of segregation. Over the past few years I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends. Perhaps Mr. Connor and his policemen have been rather nonviolent in public, as was Chief Pritchett in Albany, Georgia, but they have used the moral means of nonviolence to maintain the immoral end of racial injustice. As T. S. Eliot has said: "The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason."

I wish you had commended the Negro sit inners and demonstrators of Birmingham for their sublime courage, their willingness to suffer and their amazing discipline in the midst of great provocation. One day the South will recognize its real heroes. They will be the James Merediths, with the noble sense of purpose that enables them to face jeering and hostile mobs, and with the agonizing loneliness that characterizes the life of the pioneer. They will be old, oppressed, battered Negro women, symbolized in a seventy two year old woman in Montgomery, Alabama, who rose up with a sense of dignity and with her people decided not to ride segregated buses, and who responded with ungrammatical profundity to one who inquired about her weariness: "My feets is tired, but my soul is at rest." They will be the young high school and college students, the young ministers of the gospel and a host of their elders, courageously and nonviolently sitting in at lunch counters and willingly going to jail for conscience' sake. One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

The whole speech, in the media all of this week, is an American literary treasure. An American treasure that most of America fails to acknowledge. Racism, and discrimination in general, is alive and well in America.

Which why I do what I do. I write about social problems that I feel society can fix. I've written about theft of art at a local college, and tried to hunt down the artist's stolen piece. I have written about local governments that have confused revenue with court appearances. And I have written of police abuse, particularly in the way of how to change the power balance, and empower citizens, while maintaining community safety. I have tried to write about group-sourcing efforts to address and solve homeless issues in the state where I live.

I have a few idols, and inspirations. Mike Wallace, long-time bulldog reporter for the television news-show, 60 Minutes, was always a reliable source. David Carr, current New York Times reporter and recovered street dependant, has been a constant beacon, inspiring anyone who believes in second chances and rough personalities.

I have others, like Stephen Biko and Dr. King, whose unimaginable resolve led to the biggest movement in America's history. The March On Washington, was far more noble than the forefathers' disobedience of the British, and yet, here is America today, consumed by oppressive laws and an attack from the right wing, an attack that targets civil rights.

 

Women's Rights in America were formally started in 1848, almost 20 years before Susan B. Anthony helped form the National Woman Suffrage Association. By 1919, the United States had finally gotten around to voting on ironically, a woman's right to vote. Anthony has written the amendment in 1878. More than 40 years passed, before America made it real, or how the right wing likes to say, "We made it law."

Not quite.

Attacks on gay marriage, assaults on American minorities(Sheriff Joe), legal and political chaos, and an ignorant public, have proven that America is far from its boasts of equality for all men. Government has succeeded overall, in lowering violence in America, and education has played a roll, enlightening generations in the values of non-violence. But the progress has been painfully slow in other areas of civil rights, areas that do not require violence, instead relying on abuse of power.

In the past 30 years, the U.S. government has managed to get itself run over by big money and its inherent oppression of the poor. The middle class is substantially smaller, and now the American government wants to zero in on civil rights. From atrocities such as police assault on women, to disregarding the legal rights of the poor, and not to be forgotten- mass incarceration, the U.S. and its layers of power, are stealing American liberty.

In my own personal experience, in local college classes, "black" jokes are not unheard of. In conversations with my kids' mother's significant other, my kids were told, "Your dad probably voted for Obama," and "Your dad looks like a porch monkey in that flick."

I still have not figured out what flick...

It is these sorts of people, local sex offenders like Tim Baldwin and Graem Hromas, ultraignorant police such as Doug Lane and Jen Williams, biased judges and lawmakers getting free lunches on the taxpayer dime, that inspire me to write. I know that deep down, just like Martin Luther King Jr. knew, civil rights are not dependent on money. I know a guy like me, with no money to fight a corrupt system, can make a dent in the progressiveness that the March On Washington sought to spur me, and you, to do.

People, ordinary citizens, can be proactive in the defense of black, brown, yellow, poor, handicapped, you name it, and in today's internet age of massive data transfer in real time, people can connect, to inspire our lawmakers to hold our government and its policy, accountable.

It is important to learn the lessons that prior freedom attempts have taught, nonviolence and persistence.

It is equally important, that educators teach the true meanings of civil rights, and not some story that proclaims America unracist or overfilling at the brim with freedom.