“I must confess that the dream that I had that day has in many points turned into a nightmare. Now I’m not one to lose hope. I keep on hoping. I still have faith in the future… And I’ve come to see that we have many more difficulties ahead and some of the old optimism was a little superficial and now it must be tempered with a solid realism. And I think the realistic fact is that we still have a long, long way to go.” - The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. interview with NBC, May 8, 1967
“Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” (The more things change, the more they stay the same.) - Jean-Baptiste Alphonze Karr, 184
This Monday is the day we celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday. The irony of it also being a day when we inaugurate a President who stands against pretty much everything Dr. King stood for is just… I don’t even have a word for it.
Remaining true to my preferred IndigenousThink ways, I will flood the space with what’s good and endeavor to make the rest irrelevant.
Acts of Service
It is “American Normal” to take our heroes and place them on our illusionary hierarchy of humans, placing those who have done impressive things higher up on the imagined value ladder. We want them to be mythic. We want their accomplishments somehow out of reach for us mere mortals.
Again, with the irony. The original hope for MLK Day was to honor his legacy by spending the day serving the community and therefore carrying on the work that he promoted. Just as Dr. King’s achievements were about serving people and not about exalting him, so the holiday is intended to get us thinking about how we can carry on the work, striving for equal access and quality of life for all people.
Uncomfortable Truth
Many of the people who present for therapy are what I call the “Truth Telling Trouble Makers” in a human system, whether it be a family, a faith community, a neighborhood, a job place, a school, or what have you. As a Truth Telling Trouble Maker myself, I find it deeply satisfying when my fellow pot-stirrers come to own themselves. We make people uncomfortable; Importantly uncomfortable.
One of the ColonizerThink values embedded into the US National psyche is the idea that we are supposed to be comfortable. When uncomfortable truths emerge, there is very often fierce pushback from those who would prefer comfort to truth, healing and growth.
Discomfiting the Comfortable
What were the things that Dr. King rallied people to fight for?
Equal access to public amenities for all people. (This was a direct challenge to the Jim Crow laws that legally enforced treating non-white people as “less than” human beings.)
To put an end to unjust practices that effectively blocked qualified citizens' right to vote, thereby rendering them unable to influence the broad panoply of legislation that marginalized the very citizens whose voting rights were being unjustly denied.
Fair treatment and equal pay in the labor force
Correction of the Justice system which has intentionally marginalized people who are not of the cultural dominant
Access to unbiased legal recourse for all people who have been harmed by others.
These are not hypothetical ideals or political footballs to be kicked around. They are not opportunities to look like we are doing something good and right. Human beings do not live hypothetical lives.
Puzzling It Out
I invite you to ask yourself why it is that someone would not be comfortable with treating the entire human family with dignity and respect? Why would someone be uncomfortable with all people having access to the unbiased justice laid out in our country’s Constitution? Why would it be problematic for all eligible voters to exercise their right to vote? Why would someone have a problem with equally qualified people in any people wrapper having equal access to jobs, and for compensation for those jobs to be entirely disconnected from ethnicity, gender, political persuasion, religious beliefs, disability status or any other people wrapper distinction? Why would someone be okay with a system that grossly over-prosecutes some people more than others and applies sentencing that is dramatically more harsh for some than others?
The Uncomfortable Comfortable
Large and powerful groups of people were extremely uncomfortable with the boldness of Dr. King and those he led in discomfitting the comfortable. He was breaking the noxious social rule that, like a gas you cannot smell or taste, demands that all things and all people wrap around the comfort of those in power.
Dr. King was actively involved in the Civil Rights movement for only 13 years. In those years he and his family lived in a state of perpetual threat, actual harm and danger, persecution at the hands of those publicly charged to protect the citizenry, all culminating in his assassination at age 39. How is it that the desire for all humans to be treated as humans inspires people to behave like feral animals fighting for one little tiny scrap of food?
Fear Factor
We do not live in scarcity in the United States. There are plenty of resources. As Dr. King aptly pointed out again and again, some of us live in want because of the clutchy, constantly competing culture that hoards resources when scared and cuts off access for others in order to maintain their own comfort. When we human folk are scared, even down to our biochemistry, we lose connection to our linear logic. The more afraid we are, the more feral our behavior.
Certain elements in our culture today thrive on keeping us afraid so that we will either support their power or cede our own. Given all that Dr. King, his family and his community went through, I’m quite sure they were afraid a lot of the time. However, again and again, we see Civil Rights activists refusing to buy into the ColonizerThink, eat or be eaten mindset. How did they do that?
Ordinary People
From all I can see, they were able to keep their purpose in front of them: They spoke the truth of human harm and fought for changes that would yield a better world for all. Shifting out of a state of perpetual harm for so many, was more important than keeping themselves from harm in those moments.
We are talking about real people; Not mythical super human saints, (including Dr. King himself.) These had to have been very difficult choices. At times, even the most committed dropped back from the fight because they were exhausted, because the risks had become too high, or any number of other reasons that really aren’t our business.
This is the power of community: When I need to sleep, you can fight. When you need to rest, I can fight. This kind of collectivistic mentality is the direct antidote to ColonizerThink. This is how we leave behind a culture that eats its own. This is how we create sustainability. This is how we make intelligent choices in the light of the truth that all things truly do affect all things. (If this remains unclear to anyone, you would do well to ask the wolves and trees in Yellowstone Park.)
The Past is Present
Lest we think that the need for Civil Rights for all is some point of ancient history, we would do well to recognize that these very same injustices abound today. The means of delivery have changed, but the essential factors remain firmly in place. Moreover, we remain entrenched in ColonizerThink which, in its terrified clutchy fashion will always find or create new means to keep powerful people ever more powerful at the expense of literal planetary and human stability.
If we consume ourselves with trying to address each and every injustice, we will be ineffective, and, we will burn out. I’d like to request instead that each of us figure out what issues we might have passion, fight, ideas and/or resources to address. Study the deeper history of that issue. Firmly understand how we got where we are today and discern what foundationally needs to change in order to heal it. Those are your marching orders.
Balanced Efforts
This does not mean that you don’t care about the other issues; It means that you are choosing to be effective. Encourage and support others who are doing the work in other areas, as well as those who are doing the work you are doing. Stay focussed on what’s yours and do it to your very best ability.
Flood the space with what’s good at every level. Make ColonizerThink irrelevant. Build connection and community. Let go of the things that are not yours to do. Make sustainable changes that consider the balance of all things wherever you can.
Have yourself an ironic MLK Day.