Pulp Non Fiction
[ Friday, May 14, 2004 ]
Demanding Peace Versus Praying For It: I WANT TO SCREAM!
by Kirsten Anderberg
"Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. said that the privileged will NOT just hand over their privilege when asked. He said that privilege would have to be TAKEN out of the hands of the elite, he said they would not GIVE it over. And this has been true more often than not in human history. It is the RULE that the oppressed do not get their rights by ASKING POLITELY and then WAITING QUIETLY for them. I saw an anarchist zine recently entitled, "Peace is patriotic, that is the problem." It struck me as truth. All these "peaceful" middle-class, white, car and home-owning “activists,” who are nicely asking the Bush administration to please, maybe, stop the war, someday soon, are a problem. Their pose is one of an activist, yet the government is benefiting from them, more than peace activists are, in my opinion. Dr. King’s “peaceful” tactics were severely challenged by direct action black nationalists. King himself admitted he did not realize the severity of conditions in the inner city that were leading to the anger, hostility and violence, and you can see King’s language change as people aggressively pushed not only for equal rights, but for Black Power and Black Nationalism, which, yes, made King uncomfortable, but he was radicalized by their rage, as was the whole country, as they had a just message that rang true. You starve people long enough, and they organize their own resistance, with or without self-proclaimed “peaceful” leaders. MLKing, himself, said “We have a right to FIGHT for right.” What “peaceful” and “fight” mean in these contexts needs exploration, not exploitation. We cannot afford to play semantics anymore."
art [5:41 PM]
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