MLK, GZ and the Heart of Nonviolence
(Originally published in the January 2013 edition of the Ground Zero Newsletter, http://www.gzcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/January-2013.pdf by Leonard Eiger; This essay may be copied and distributed freely.)
"When scientific power outruns moral power, we end up with guided missiles and misguided men” (Martin Luther King Jr.).
Just what does an organization working to abolish nuclear weapons have in common with Dr. King? The quote above by Dr. King sums it up, speaking to the root – or what should be called the taproot – of violence in the hearts of human beings that spurs “scientific power” to “outrun moral power,” thereby threatening all humanity with nuclear weapons.
When we hear about Dr. King – generally once a year around
the time of his birthday, January 15th – the corporate news media refers to him
as “the slain civil rights leader.” But Dr. King was so much more than
that. The TV images the media convey are
always the same ones – battling segregation in Birmingham
in 1963; reciting his dream of racial harmony in Washington
in 1963; marching for voting rights in Selma , Alabama in 1965; and lying dead on the motel balcony in Memphis
In the early 1960s when Dr. King
was challenging rampant, legalized racial discrimination in the South, most
major media were his allies, showing graphic footage of police dogs, bullwhips
and cattle prods used against southern African Americans who sought the right
to vote or eat at a public lunch counter.
After the passage of the Civil
Rights Acts in 1964 and 1965 Dr. King began challenging our nation’s
fundamental priorities. He maintained that the civil rights laws meant nothing
without human rights, including economic rights. He spoke out against the huge
gaps between rich and poor, and called for "radical changes in the
structure of our society" to redistribute wealth and power.
Dr. King did not suddenly become an opponent of war (and
nuclear weapons) once the major civil rights struggle was over. As early as 1954 he said in one of his
sermons that “the great danger facing us today is not so much the atomic bomb
that was created by physical science.
Not so much the atomic bomb that you can put in an airplane and drop on
the heads of hundreds and thousands of people – as dangerous as that is. But the real danger confronting civilization
today is that atomic bomb which lies in the hearts and souls of men, capable of
exploding into the vilest of hate and into the most damaging selfishness –
that’s the atomic bomb we’ve got to fear today.”
Dr. King understood that the overt manifestations of violence
– war and nuclear weapons – were deadly symptoms of a much deeper malady of the
human heart. He understood violence all
too well, both through experiencing it firsthand and through a deep study of
Christian and Gandhian nonviolence.
By
1967 Dr. King had become one of the country’s most prominent opponents of the
Vietnam War as well as a staunch critic of overall United States
He
went on to say that, “the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we
must speak. We must speak with all the
humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak.” There
is no other choice for us, because, “silence is betrayal.”
Dr. King saw the connection between war and the
evisceration of social programs in this country. He “knew that America would never invest the necessary funds
or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam [or Iraq
and Afghanistan
Dr. King spoke of “a far deeper malady within the American
spirit” that, of course, is greed. He said that it is our "refusing to
give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of
overseas investments" that governs our foreign policy, and makes the
As a true modern-day prophet Dr. King was
not afraid to warn people in the U.S. that, “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 hammered away at the need for everyone to
speak out and use the most creative methods of protest possible, not just
against the war, but also for “significant and profound change in American life
and policy.” He believed that, “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.”
Ground Zero has, for over 35 years, carried on in the spirit
of nonviolent direct action as we, too, seek “to keep the world from committing
the suicide of nuclear war.” In a grand
experiment in truth we “explore the meaning and practice of nonviolence from a
perspective of deep spiritual reflection, providing a means for witnessing to
and resisting all nuclear weapons” (from Ground Zero’s mission statement).
Michael Honey, in his book “Going Down the Jericho Road”,
spoke clearly to King’s commitment to nonviolent direct action in a passage
about James Lawson, who worked closely with King. “Like King, he [Lawson] spoke of ‘soul force’
or satyagraha, as the crucial ingredient needed to keep the world from
committing the suicide of nuclear war and to defeat racism. For him, pacifism meant: ‘We will make the
choice according to the methods that we use, not according to the ends that we
seek.’”
For me that statement goes
to the heart of Ground Zero. Although we
seek an end to nuclear weapons, the end(s) do not justify just any means. We understand the dangers of compromising the
spirit of nonviolence in order to hasten the process. We understand that we may not see the fruits
of our labors in our lifetime(s), yet we continue speaking out and resisting
nonviolently, unabated in the struggle, knowing that the alternative is
unspeakable. There
is no other choice for us because “silence is betrayal” [to future
generations].
As we prepare to celebrate Dr. King this month and rededicate
ourselves to the long struggle to abolish nuclear weapons I think it
appropriate to let him have the last word, something to create a broad
perspective for us to live into:
 |
| A very public display of Dr. King's prophetic message - at Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action's MLK Nonviolent Direct Action at the Bangor Trident ballistic missile submarine base in 2012 |
“It is no longer a choice, my friends, between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence. And the alternative to disarmament, the alternative to a greater suspension of nuclear tests, the alternative to strengthening the United Nations and thereby disarming the whole world, may well be a civilization plunged into the abyss of annihilation, and our earthly habitat would be transformed into an inferno that even the mind of Dante could not imagine.” --Martin Luther King, Jr., Remaining Awake Through A Great Revolution
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