Almost 70 years old, still spot on [NOT 18/1/21]

18/1/21 brightersideoflife 18
screenshot of 2 paragraphs from Dr King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail"
emphasis added by me

Hi friends! I wanted to share Rev. Dr. King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”

It’s a quick read and if you have never read it or hadn’t read it in years, well worth taking a few minutes.

https://www.csuchico.edu/iege/_assets/documents/susi-letter-from-birmingham-jail.pdf

If you don’t prefer pdf format, here’s just as text –

http://africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html

Especially poignant reminder as we hear white moderates (and most republicans) whine about how we shouldn’t prosecute insurrectionists or impeach Trump etc etc.

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18 Comments

  2. One of the nuns had us read this in the seventh grade (when it was a lot more recent, tbh), and I remember the impact.  Even though the nuns scared the hell out of me and still inhabit my psychosexual nightmares, I have come to respect them for being progressive as hell for those times.  Seriously though, I can’t see a nun in habit to this day without getting both frightened and aroused.  

    • Relatedly

      Nuns are weirdly progressive in some ways, I think because they often spend more time with community endeavors and aren’t as well-funded as many of the priest groups.

      For example, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious is this group representing like 80% of nuns in the United States. They supported Obamacare when it was rolled out because they were like “well we don’t like how it expands access to contraceptives, but hey people are suffering due to lack of health care and this would help the poor.”

      American Catholic bishops, notably, were hard core anti-Obamacare because OMG someone think of the unborn!

      Nazi youth pope threatened the nuns with excommunication and forced a reorg of their structure. DOUCHE.

      • Ngl, I was THRILLED when Benny-red-shoes announced he was stepping down, and I was *hoping* Bergoglio would be chosen…
        And I DID cry some happy tears, when I heard “Francesco” in the background behind the NPR coverage, because I KNEW that as a Jesuit, he was picking his name for Asisi.
         
        It meant SUCH a huge change from the bitterness & rot of Benedict (who seemed to be trying to overturn Vatican 2😒).
         
        Admittedly,I WAS hoping for even *moar* pushing from Papa-Frank, but at least he’s started to push out the rot & corruption & pedophilia.
        Could be a LOT more, and a LOT faster, imo… but I *get* that he has a ton of the curia who very much don’t want any change, because they avariciously adore their power & positions within the church hierarchy…

    • I’ve never known a nun, not being Catholic, but I had an elementary school teacher who was an ex-nun, and I developed ex-nun-dar
       
      Over the following years I’ve run into a certain type — short haired,  professional, fairly blunt, organized women (but not harsh ruler across the knuckles types) who immediately made me think “ex-nun” who did, in fact turn out to have once gone down that path.

        • Honestly?
           
          According to the beliefs we were told to follow, in the post V-2 church?
           
          They’re most LIKELY 100% right!😉
           
          *Do good in the world
          *Treat one another as you would be treated
          And love God above all others.
           
          Most nuns–especially the ex-ones😉–seem to live primarily by the rule laid out in Matthew 25:40, “Whatsoever you do, for the least of my people, so also you did unto me.”
           
          So, yeah, pretty confident that the way they live would be the way we’re supposed to go it–radical care for our fellow human, and a HELLUVALOT of social justice😉💖
           
           

    • Have you ever heard of some of the superstitions surrounding nuns in Italy? It’s fascinating. I don’t know ow widespread these superstitions are and where they’re still believed, but my favorite is that they have the power to cause impotence and sterility in men. If a nun makes eye contact with you, instinctively put your hand over your crotch to ward this off. Back when trains were civilized they used to have compartments, not open seating, and it was considered unlucky to ride in one with a nun. Never enter a compartment inhabited by a nun, and if one joins you in yours get up and leave. This last one is not a superstition; I’ve witnessed and benefitted from this myself. If you come to a particularly chaotic intersection and feel uneasy about joining the other pedestrians as they deftly pick their way through the zooming car and Vespa traffic, see if you can find a nun, or better yet a group of nuns, and follow them, being careful not to make eye contact. All traffic will come to a screening halt to allow them to pass peacefully. We did this near the Campidoglio in Rome and it worked like a charm.

  3. The same monsters who are cynically tweeting tributes to MLK today are trying to argue with a straight face the same sick argument as the people begging King to stop and not be “unwise and untimely”  — ask for your rights now and you will only make things worse. Demand an end to white supremacy and you will force us to side with white supremacists.
     
    The historical fact, and the fact today, is that the wall between the Klan and the “we know strategy better than you” crowd isn’t really a wall. It’s a curtain that gets pulled back to let both sides mingle whenever they think nobody else is looking.

  4. Big fan of Beyond Vietnam.
     

    It is with such activity that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on to the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin, we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. 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.
    A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

    All those jokers that talkity talk about “Ohhhh, MLK would want you to shut up and be peeeeaaacccefuuuullll…” This is not the peace they’re thinking of.

  5. It truly is a pity that his multiple works and accomplishments are too often reduced to the “I Have a Dream” speech, or sound bites thereof. Secondary or middle school-aged students could certainly benefit from having this worked into their curricula as their slightly more in depth study of King and why he gets a national holiday.

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