On April 4, 1967, exactly one year before his tragic assassination, in his prophetic speech, “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence,” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. declared: “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” He went on to name the United States Government as the greatest purveyor of violence in the world. In the speech King preaches that nonviolent direct action is our greatest hope and best tool to bring about the changes we seek.
When Dr. King gave this 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.
In this powerful speech Dr, King provides both a diagnosis and a cure that remains fully relevant today. “I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values…. 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.”
The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival has picked up Dr. King’s unfinished work weaving the interlocking injustices of systemic racism, systemic poverty, environmental devastation, militarism and the war economy and a distorted moral narrative of Christian nationalism, into one “moral fusion” campaign.
UFPJ encourages groups around the country to organize public participatory readings of the speech this April 4 as part of the Poor People’s Campaign Mobilization for the June 18 Mass Poor People’s & Low-Wage Workers’ Assembly and Moral March on Washington.
We have prepared a toolkit which provides everything you need to organize your own reading. You can organize a reading in person or online. Let us know if you’re planning a reading!
Listen to an audio recording of Dr. King delivering “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence” on April 4, 1967.
Heads up, member groups! UFPJ will be inviting member groups to participate in a virtual reading of “Beyond Vietnam” on April 4 and launching a Poor People’s Campaign working group. You’ll be hearing more from us soon.
