James Maiewski: Missing MLK’s telling conviction

MLK Jr.’s legacy was his essential intuition that the only lasting, effective remedy for any inequity lies in collective action. His drive to undo injustice writ large led him inexorably to an exhortation to see the common roots of personally felt injustices.

Again this year we hear many eloquent tributes which, while not ignoring this, seem consistently to omit the very conclusion his (tragically curtailed) lifetime of thought and experience had brought him to: Much of our suffering comes as a direct result of holding the rights of property superior to human rights.

There is not space in this letter to begin to explore the many ways this is true, but consider: We’ve just lived through a national debate wherein the Democrats identified myriad baleful consequences of electoral defeat. Yet accepting all of these consequences was deemed preferable to lessening the opposition party’s fealty to capital.

Among the sufferings that this fealty prolongs and exacerbates, I assert that the impending climate calamity is the most dire. The children of tomorrow will be asking us what we did in our time to avert disaster. I do not envy those who will have to look into these children’s faces and tell them they did anything less than work to drive a stake into the heart of capitalism.

James Maiewski

Florence