April 4, 2020 will mark the 52nd anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s tragic and untimely assassination, and the 53rd anniversary of his prophetic speech, “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.”
In the years following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, peace and justice groups in Oakland California started organizing annual April 4 public participatory readings of Dr. King’s “Beyond Vietnam” speech in front of the Federal Building. These readings have served as powerful community-building experiences and have since been organized by groups around the country. (For future years when public gatherings once more are possible, you can find information and materials for organizing such a reading here.)
This year, as the coronavirus pandemic spreads terror around the world, we invite you to listen to a recording of Dr. King giving this speech, as you read the text and reflect on its meaning today.
Hopefully, by April 4, 2021 we’ll be able to gather again in public spaces and experience the inspiration of participating in public readings of this powerful speech.
When Dr. King gave the speech, the United States was embroiled in the Vietnam War. The country was in turmoil as peace activists resisted the draft, and anti-war and civil rights protesters took to the streets. King’s speech laid bare the relationship between U.S. wars abroad and the racism and poverty being challenged by the civil rights movement at home. And it was controversial in some parts of the civil rights movement.
The U.S. has been at war in Iraq for more than 28 years and continues to wage wars around the world. Tensions among nuclear-armed nations have risen to levels not seen since the darkest days of the Cold War. Every hour, U.S. taxpayers are paying $32.08 million for Total Cost of Wars Since 2001. The endless wars have cost millions of lives and trillions of dollars, while the needs of growing numbers of Americans go unmet.
The Trump administration has requested over $740 billion for the military in its Fiscal Year 2021 budget proposal. That’s far more than the U.S. spent for military purposes at the height of the Korean or Vietnam Wars or the peak of the Reagan buildup of the 1980s. In 2018 U.S. spending on the Pentagon was greater than the amounts spent by the next seven nations combined — China, Saudi Arabia, India, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and Germany.
The biggest increase in the proposed budget is a nearly 20% increase in spending on nuclear weapons at $45 billion. The amount of money spent in one year by the U.S. on nuclear weapons could instead provide 300,000 ICU (intensive care unit) beds, 35,000 ventilators and 75,000 doctors’ salaries.
At the same time, this budget slashes Medicaid and food stamps and eliminates low-income heating aid and other programs. Military spending currently accounts for 53% of the discretionary federal budget. By 2030, the Trump budget would give 62% of the discretionary budget to the Pentagon.
In his “Beyond Vietnam” speech, Dr. King declared: “A nation that continues year after year to spend more on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
We believe that Dr. King’s words were both precautionary and prophetic, providing both a diagnosis and a cure – “a true revolution of values” – for our society’s gravest illnesses, “the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism.”
At the time he was murdered, Dr. King was organizing a massive Poor People’s Campaign. The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival has picked up Dr. King’s unfinished agenda, and on June 20, 2020, will hold the largest digital and social media gathering of poor and low wealth people, moral and religious leaders, advocates, and people of conscience in this nation’s history. The global pandemic is exposing even more the already existing crisis of systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation, the war economy and militarism, and the distorted narrative of religious nationalism.
United for Peace and Justice is proud to be a national organizing partner of the Poor People’s Campaign. Sign the Poor People’s Campaign petition, “Poverty Amidst Pandemic: A Moral Response to COVID-19.”
