Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence Rev. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us. Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. !1V"7AQau2TUqt#46BRrs35b$e%CSFc&d ? On April 4, 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr., an enormously influential civil rights activist, conveys his indignant and hopeful thoughts regarding the Vietnam War, in his speech "Beyond Vietnam," by utilizing biblical allusion, anaphora, and use of diction. Giu 11, 2022 | narcissistic withdrawal. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent? Peace and civil rights dont mix, they say. Fifty years ago in 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr. gave a speech that startled even many of his supporters in the Civil Rights Movement. A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I and others have been waging in America. King's Beyond Vietnam sermon, delivered on April 4, 1967, at New York's Riverside Church . This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. By Matthew Hoh, Counter Punch, January 16, 2023. The speech titled "Beyond Vietnam" is relevant to today's war in Ukraine. The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise, we must choose in this crucial moment of human history. Is it among these voiceless ones? 51 0 obj 3 Pages. Interior of Riverside Church on W. 120th Street in Manhattan. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all men for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? xcbd`g`b``8 "Y& D2 IF>E0y6DrLb`] R3XM-c |)f&!ME Become a member of THIRTEEN ($5 monthly or $60 annually) and get access to THIRTEEN Passport as our thanks for your support. Martin Luther King had spoken critically about the Vietnam War before, but it was his blistering Beyond Vietnam speech at an event sponsored by Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam that gained wide attention. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. We must stop now. Some great cause, Gods new Messiah offering each the bloom or blight, Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. #3 Government Support. At the time, civil rights leaders publicly condemned him for it. The pro-social justice and anti-war speech were delivered to state MLK's opposition . So, too, with Hanoi. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. King, " The Casualties of the War in Vietnam, " 25 February 1967, CLPAC. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305. The AMERICAN War had come to define AMERICA in the second half of the 20th century. These are revolutionary times. The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering realityand if we ignore this sobering reality, we will find ourselves organizing clergy and laymen concerned committees for the next generation. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land. So, I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such. Is our nation planning to build on political myth again, and then shore it up upon the power of new violence? Hear the entire recording of Martin Luther King, Jr.s Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence speech, including introductory applause and a greeting King makes to his fellow clergy speakers. But the day has passed for superficial patriotism. Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence was delivered by Martin Luther King Jr., on April 4, 1967, at a meeting of concerned clergy and laity at Riverside Church in New York City, New York. beyond vietnam 7 reasons. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: Let us love one another, for love is God. During this time period there was a lot of controversy surrounding the war. See transcript of full speech, below. 53 0 obj There's no pattern, and that's what's so frustrating.". Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. The speech is considered a turning point in the public opinions of the Vietnam War. Life expectancy rose from 70.5 to 75.5 years between 1990 and 2020. What must they think of the United States of America when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem, which helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the South? by Rick Sterling January 16, 2023. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would never live on the same block in Detroit. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. 1. punished the poor. 3. Iv?'WK4(WUx:mEc>Z:ShY| x_5i_TVov8mTS&YG=^mDHrUrrEWjTTSVSHM]A"mYq-,Hkjf^\@&` |\.xz][WjG9'*&WOyeV_5i#>Z:ShY| x_5igZfS_;nC5. They wander into the hospitals with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one Vietcong-inflicted injury. A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, This way of settling differences is not just. This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nations homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. Dr. King's purpose is to make the church leaders he is speaking to aware that There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood. Martin Luther King, Jr. makes a compelling case for the proposition that the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War is unjust using ethos (facts and commonly accepted values or ethics), pathos (appeals to emotion through powerful descriptive language), and . They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. King urged insteada radical revolution of valuesemphasizing love and justice rather than economic nationalism (King, Beyond Vietnam,157). 1968 was a turning point in U.S. history, a year of triumphs and tragedies, social and political upheavals, that forever changed our country. . Vincent Harding and his first wife, Rosemarie, were friends and colleagues of Martin and Coretta King in the Southern Freedom Movement, directing an interracial voluntary service unit of the Mennonite Church (Mennonite House) in . On April 4, 1967, exactly one year before his assassination, Dr. Martin Luther King gave his first major public address on the War in Vietnam at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City. As Arnold Toynbee says: Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. In the mid-1950s, King led the movement to end segregation and counter prejudice in the . As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. Beyond Vietnam (or Time to End the Silence) . endobj I still think this is probably the best., It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor both black and white through the poverty program. . The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., is a civil rights legend. Though her portions be the scaffold, and upon the throne be wrong endobj "Beyond Vietnam", Silence is Betrayal: Martin Luther King's Historic 1967 Speech Introduction by Michel Chossudovsky. Soon, the only solid solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call fortified hamlets. The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these. King delivered a speech entitled " Beyond Vietnam ," pointing out that the war effort was "taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem" (King, " Beyond Vietnam ," 143). Martin Luther King uses persuasive argument in his speeches. English "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence", also referred as Riverside Church speech, is an anti-Vietnam war and pro- social justice speech delivered by Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4, 1967. Ho Chi Minh has watched as America has spoken of peace and built up its forces, and now he has surely heard the increasing international rumors of American plans for an invasion of the North. Omar Khayyam is right: The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on.. Speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. against the "triple evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism." Audio. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. Perhaps a more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. In early 1967 King stepped up his anti-war proclamations, giving similar speeches in Los Angeles and Chicago. Dr. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word (unquote). We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. P: (650) 723-2092 | F: (650) 723-2093 | kinginstitute@stanford.edu| Campus Map. They know they must move on or be destroyed by our bombs. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative method of protest possible. Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. In Dr. Martin Luther King's speech "Beyond VietnamA Time to Break Silence" (1967), Dr. King asserts that the war in Vietnam is totally immoral and has far reaching negative implications not only for Vietnam, but for The United States and the rest of the World as well. In the speech at Riverside Church, King talked about how the US had supported . To King, however, the Vietnam War was only the most pressing symptom of American colonialism worldwide. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within ones own bosom and in the surrounding world. Screenshots are considered by the King Estate a violation of this notice. For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. And history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. All the while the people read our leaflets and received the regular promises of peace and democracy and land reform. Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech, Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence argues his stance against the government and their decisions on war. 2. create an unilateral cease fire leading to peace talks. Kings address emphasized his responsibility to the American people and explained that conversations with young black men in the ghettos reinforced his own commitment to nonviolence. If Americas soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read: Vietnam. King holds the U.S. government and the American people responsible for the Vietnam . 52 0 obj For 7 reasons: 1. What of the National Liberation Front, that strangely anonymous group we call VC or communists? King, Statement on voter registration in Alabama, 9 March 1965, MLKJP-GAMK. Recent flashpoints. MLK: Beyond Vietnam to Ukraine. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has a revolutionary spirit. 609 Words. Surely we must see that our own computerized plans of destruction simply dwarf their greatest acts. We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. Rationalizations and the incessant search for scapegoats are the psychological cataracts that blind us to our sins. 2. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor both black and white through the poverty program. King enumerated seven major reasons to bring the war to an end based on moral vision. Seleziona una pagina. And some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. Get a roundup of broadcast and digital premieres, special offers, and events with our weekly newsletter. He who lives with untruth lives in spiritual slavery. We must move past indecision to action. Both sides alleged, more or less accurately, that the other side was continuously violating the terms . 3. stop the creation of battlefield in Laos and Thailand. Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence Jim Meyer 2020, Beyond Vietnam:A Time to Break Silence Abstract "The time has come for America to hear the truth about this tragic war. 55 0 obj It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Cambodia and why American napalm and Green Beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru. America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. Relevance to U.S. Wars and Militarism Today By Mary Hladky, American Friends Service Committee, KC Program Committee Clerk and United for Peace and Justice, Coordinating Committee Member 50 years ago, on April 4, 1967 at Riverside Church, in NYC, Martin Luther King delivered his powerful and most . Here's the essay I wrote in the video: In the speech "Beyond Vietnam - A Time to Break Silence," Dr. Rev. One speech to show he did this is the "Beyond Vietnam - A Time to Break Silence" speech. stream I say it plain, The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly rooted out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords, and refused even to discuss reunification with the North. But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators, our chosen man, Premier Diem.