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About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 14, 2015)
HONORING DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. measuring king’s nobel Peace Prize, today Have times really changed? Is his vision for peace relevant in the 21st Century? T he Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. dedi- cated his life to much more than achieving racial equality. That goal, he said again and again, was insep- arable from alleviating poverty and stopping war. And he reiterated this theme after being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize 50 years ago in October, 2014. “I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the star- less midnight of racism and war, that the bright day- break of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality,” he said in his Nobel acceptance speech. “Sooner or later, all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace.” Half a century later, it’s obvious that enormous progress has been made toward overcoming racial discrimination -- that King was right in his vision about race. Yet widespread pover- ty remains, in America and beyond, and bombs still fall as brutal wars rage on. Was King naive? Was his full vision simply unobtain- able — do free markets require poor people to func- tion, and will war always assert itself as a defining human habit? Is King’s Nobel vision rel- evant five decades later? Absolutely, insist some who study King’s life and philosophy. They say his racial proclamations and strategies, so controversial back then but now part of the American cultural canon, can and should apply to today’s stubborn issues of poverty and war. “I don’t think his vision has ever been more rele- vant,” says Paul Chappell, a West Point graduate who served in Iraq and now teaches and writes books about peace. “The problem is, people don’t realize how prophetic King was.” Chappell, the Peace Lead- ership Director for the Nuclear Age Peace Founda- tion, which seeks a world without nuclear weapons, says a close examination of King’s life and work shows he predicted today’s protests over income inequality and trillions of war dollars drained from America’s budgets. “He realized that Ameri- can military intervention is not only harmful to people around the world, it’s also harmful to the American people,” Chappell says. The peace prize for King, then just 35 years old, hon- ored a Southern preacher whose philosophy, courage and oratory galvanized the civil rights movement, on whose behalf he said he accepted it. It gave a unique international recognition to approached all-out war in Vietnam. King accepted the award in Oslo, Norway, on December 10, and the fol- lowing day delivered the traditional Nobel lecture. ‘Sooner or later, all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace’ The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. the movement’s accom- plishments at a pivotal time. The prize was announced on October 14, 1964, against a backdrop of the Civil Rights Act, whose passage earlier that year finally granted black Ameri- cans full citizenship. But it also came as the nation In his remarks, King returned to a lifelong theme of describing a world where love and compassion could conquer poverty and con- flict. His strategies were based on nonviolence — “the need for man to over- come oppression and violence without resorting WIKIPEDIA By Jesse Washington, AP National Writer President lyndon B. Johnson, martin luther king, Jr., and rosa Parks at the signing of the Voting rights act on august 6, 1965. to violence and oppression,” as he said in his speech. “The foundation of such a method is love,” he said. “The Nobel speeches real- ly are neglected gems of how long-term progress against these evils requires a great commitment of mind and spirit and cooperation See NOBEL on page 15 January 14, 2015 The Portland and Seattle Skanner Page 5
