#BelovedCommunity

Few words before today’s Winter Walk to end homelessness in Boston — grounded by Coretta Scott King’s words, The Embrace, and Freedom Plaza.

Beloved community starts with us.

#Boston #MLK #quotes #Community

#RestInPower #JesseJackson

We've lost a formative giant. We'll carry on the work.

#BelovedCommunity
#NoJusticeNoPeace isn't a threat - it's the Law of Moral Gravity

✊🏾🕯🙏🏽🕯👑

Happy Birthday, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. | 3CHICSPOLITICO

This is my favorite section from

“Letter from a Birmingham Jail [King, Jr.]”

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was “well timed” in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, “Wait.” But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness”–then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an “I it” relationship for an “I thou” relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression of man’s tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong.

This is what I wrote Last MLK Day:

I have written that 2025 is about Fascism for White people, because Black people in America have experienced American Fascism. It was called Jim Crow, and my ancestors lived with it for about a century.

A great number of people in this country are in for a rude awakening. For those who just couldn’t find a way to go vote for the Vice-President in November… a very rude awakening.

I remember a post over at DailyKos, where a Black young man, got into an argument with his father about MLK. His father told him point blank – MLK and the movement he led, stopped random White people from being able to terrorize them without impunity. As someone who grew up with that – THAT was the greatest gift MLK gave to the ‘Negro’. And, if you’ve never lived under that kind of oppression, you can’t possibly understand what it means to be relieved of that pressure.

Sadly, I was correct. Many communities who chose chasing YT Adjacency over voting for Kamala Harris have been learning a painful lesson this past year.
The Black community resting the way that we have wasn’t on my bingo card for 2025, but, we have been very on point. Because, this wasn’t our lesson to learn. No, we are not getting out in the streets. We will not be cannon fodder for any other community.

From The King Center:

Be A King
@BerniceKing
Let’s tell the truth. – President Trump’s claim that the 1964 Civil Rights Act caused harm to white people is a false narrative that distorts history and obscures reality.

My father, Fannie Lou Hamer, John Lewis, Amelia Boynton and many others did not work for racial and economic justice to divide this nation. They put themselves in harm’s way and suffered state sanctioned violence because America systemically and abhorrently denied freedom, dignity, opportunity, and protection to millions of Black people.

Nonviolence requires truth telling and courageous action. Creating the Beloved Community requires rejecting fear based myths, defending civil rights, educating ourselves and others about what really happened, and organizing across differences to eradicate injustice and expand dignity for everyone.

Creating the Beloved Community also requires understanding that honorable equity does not equal oppression for a group accustomed to prospering at the expense of other groups.

#CivilRightsAct #BelovedCommunity #MLK
https://x.com/BerniceKing/status/2011152258667319708?s=20

Some little known speeches from Dr. King.

Source: Happy Birthday, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. | 3CHICSPOLITICO

#BelovedCommunity #CivilRightsAct #MLK

Check out and share my latest post, “Storychasing Easter’s Home and Affordable Housing” #dw4jc #AffordableHousing #housing #Charlotte #CharlotteNC #CaldwellPres-home-and-affordable-housing/

#dw4jc #AffordableHousing #housing #Charlotte #CharlotteNC #CaldwellPres #Presbyterian #BelovedCommunity