[Above: Martin Luther King Jr. delivering a speech on the Vietnam War and his anti-war beliefs to a crowd of 7,000 people in May 1967 at the University of California, Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza in Berkeley, California. Photo from RD-COM.]
“A time comes when silence is betrayal” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 1967 “Beyond Vietnam-A Time to Break the Silence.”
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Around the MLK Jr. holiday, I usually read and reflect on Dr. King’s teachings—and how they relate to environmental justice in my home city–Madison, Wisconsin. Sometimes I write about my reflections, as I did in 2018, 2019, and last year.
Madison has been voted one of America’s “best places to live” countless times over the years in various city contests. But it is not the “best” place to live for low income people and people of color, given that is has some of the most glaring economic and racial disparities in the country. The city also hosts a variety of stark environmental justice problems, many that were created by past city decisions. These environmental injustices are mostly invisible and ignored by city leaders, the university, and even big environmental groups here.
What drives these disparities, in one of the most privileged and purportedly progressive cities in the country? Of his many brilliant writings and passionate speeches, Dr. King’s “Beyond Vietnam-A Time to Break the Silence” has resonated most with my activism and experiences in Madison. Among the most powerful lines (which I’ve quoted many times):
“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.”
As I wrote last year, Dr. King’s “giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism” underpin many of Madison’s social disparities and dysfunctions. They were central to Madison’s founding by highly privileged east-coast elites in the mid-1800s–after the Ho-Chunk Indians, whose ancestors had lived here for thousands of years prior, were violently removed by the U.S. government.[1] They flourish in Madison to this day, driving many political decisions in one way or another—worsening many social, economic, and racial disparities—and environmental injustices caused by these intertwined disparities.
MLK was “rebranded” by the media & powers-that-be, according to Black scholars
Some African American scholars, like Dr. Jared Ball (see also here) and Dr. Cynthia McKinney, argue that that the ideas in Dr. King’s Beyond Vietnam speech—particularly questioning capitalism, materialism and militarism—deemed him a threat to the status quo, while his less threatening arguments, such as those in the oft-quoted “We Need a Dream,” were palatable to the powers-that-be and therefore were highlighted in his rebranding.
This week, on Jan. 17, 2022, Dr. Ball was interviewed by David Swanson—and the same day, Madison’s WORT aired an interview with him. [see also footnote 2]
In the Jan 17, 2022 interview, Dr. Ball explained how King was rebranded as someone who “would be acceptable to the state” after his death. The rebranding portrays King as a “politically soft” advocate, in part by highlighting his less radical messages—e.g. he was recast as an “integrationist, hold your hands and sing Kumbaya and pray” social justice activist, Ball said, “someone who could be promoted in McDonalds commercials, at national monuments, a symbol of the state.”
But the real Dr. King “was a vociferous critic of capitalism” who “sought to become a more aggressive opponent of what this country was doing,” Ball explains, based on his deep research on King’s life, work and writings. King believed that “Black struggle in U.S. was part of the global anti-imperial, anti-colonial struggles” and specifically tied racism to militarism and materialism.
Ball laments the fact that that King’s messages were “rebranded into hashtags and T-shirts and events, as opposed to the sustained radical movement he advocated.” In his final years, Ball’s research shows, King was increasingly discussed as a threat and “enemy of the state” and “demeaned” in mainstream media. In contrast, media coverage now treats him as a hero, but in a “very limited” and “anesthetized” way.” Consequently, few know about what King really believed and fought for, especially in the last few years before his tragic assassination at age 39.
[Anyone who wants to better understand Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s more critical and radical teachings, and how they differ from societal and media “rebranding” of him after his death. should listen to these interviews by Black scholars, especially Dr. Ball. I learned many things I didn’t know, and will follow up by reading books they mentioned.]
Madison is silent about MLK’s Vietnam Speech and the “giant triplets”
The City of Madison, despite its purported radical politics and commitment to racial equity and social justice, has ignored the teachings in Dr. King’s “Beyond Vietnam” speech.
None of the MLK Jr. Day celebrations I’ve attended in my time in Madison have mentioned the “giant triplets,” other ideas from the “Beyond Vietnam” speech, or similar King teachings (if so, I’ve missed it). Until I heard the WORT interview on Tuesday, I’d not seen or heard any local media stories around the MLK holiday that have mentioned them. Perhaps they hit too close to home here?
As long as Madison city leaders pretend King’s evil “giant triplets” don’t exist here, and deny their deep and pervasive power over the city’s economic, political and institutional policies and decisions—and do not work to change this—the city will never do more than pay token lip service to its obvious social, economic, and racial disparities, or its environmental justice problems, most of which the evil triplets created in the first place.
But the “lip service” approach, which is not threatening to the status quo, prevails. As one of my activist friends often said about the city’s pretense of addressing environmental justice, Madison is great at “putting lipstick on a pig.” Or, more commonly, it wallows in outright denialism, not even bothering with the lipstick but instead boldly touting itself as the “best” place to live even while knowing it is not the “best” for the BIPOC and low income people–especially those exposed to the city’s toxic environmental pollution from factories, toxic groundwater plumes, and the U.S. military base embedded in the city.
Why? City leaders care more about “machines and computers, profit motives and property rights” than people. Materialism, militarism, and capitalism are the ruling gods here—not public health and environmental justice.
In Part II, I’ll write about yet another sad saga in which Madison’s “lipstick on a pig” denialism and the giant triplets gods here are shaping what the city is willing to do—and not do—about obvious environmental injustices it created.
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[1] Whether they were aware of it or not, my ancestors (who came to the city in 1851 from Northern England) benefited from this genocide, as well as the privilege and racism of the city’s founders.
[2] In 2018, Dr. Ball interviewed Dr. Cynthia McKinney, six term Congresswoman from Georgia, former Presidential Green Party nominee, who echoed Dr. Ball’s arguments.
