In a comment on her wonderful post In Dire Need of Creative Extremists (The text of which was mostly Martin Luther King’s “Letter From A Birmingham Jail”), Real History Lisa wrote “Salon today has an article asking ‘where is the outrage’ over the war in Iraq, and saying that, lacking people in the streets, the Democrats will likely let the war continue.”

My reply follows.
Where is the outrage?

Where are “we”?

It’s right there in MLK’s letter, Lisa.

Edited below to make it a little more contemporary.

I must make two honest confessions to you, my brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the great stumbling block in our stride toward freedom is not the Neocons or the Republicans or Fundamentalist Christianity, but the media-driven white middle class, which is more devoted to “order” than to justice; which prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; which constantly says, “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; which paternalistically believes it can set the timetable for the achievement of freedom and justice; which lives by a mythical concept of time and which constantly advises us the wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating that absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tensions in the world are a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace in which the Third World passively accepted its unjust plight to a substantive and positive peace in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed with all the tension its exposure creates to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

THAT’S “where ‘we’ are”, Lisa.

Martin was a prophet.

As above, so below.

As then, so now.

What police dogs will NEXT be set on the dark peoples who so brazenly defy the International White Citizen’s Council?

And which Pelosi-like white moderates will counsel moderation THIS time?

IMPEACH!!!

VAYA!!!

AG

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