NEW HAVEN,
CT ---- The annual reading of Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr.’s great anti-war speech “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence,”
will take place tomorrow in City Hall.
The reading,
sponsored by several peace organizations, will be held at 12 noon on the second
floor of City Hall, 165 Church Street.
Wednesday is
the anniversary of Dr. King’s birthday. The nation officially observes King’s
birthday on Monday, January 20.
In the speech,
given on April 4, 1967 before an audience of 3,000 people at the Riverside Church in New York City, the civil
rights leader came out strongly against the war in Vietnam and condemned US
militaristic policies around the world. He deplored the fact that the country was
spending so much money on war while ignoring crumbling cities and poor people at
home.
“A nation
that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on
programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death,” he said.
A number of
leaders and pundits at the time denounced King for his criticism of the Vietnam War (in which the US had been fighting communist
guerillas for several years resulting in hundreds of thousands of casualties) and
said that he had ruined his legacy as a civil rights leader by venturing into
foreign affairs.
But in his
speech King said memorably, “There comes a time when silence is betrayal. And
that time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.”
Exactly one
year after King spoke those words, he was assassinated in Memphis Tennessee.
The public reading of Dr. King’s speech is taking place as the United States is again involved in wars overseas even though these wars are considered so-called “proxy wars” where the United States does not actually have troops on the ground. But the US is still spending hundreds of billions dollars to fund the two countries fighting the wars.
In Gaza, Israel is waging a genocidal attack on Palestinians
and in Ukraine, that nation is locked in a now three-year-old conflict with Russia.
The war in Gaza,
by all accounts, has triggered a humanitarian disaster for civilians. Some 45,000
people have been killed, according to official estimates. But many experts believe
that figure is much higher and the real total is over 200,000 deaths. Infrastructure
has been devastated with hospitals, schools and residences bombed or burned to
the ground.
Thousands have
been displaced and are living in tents. Heavy rains and freezing temperatures
have created intolerable living conditions and a number of children have frozen
to death. Human rights observers claim Israel has conducted a systematic
campaign to wreck Gaza’s health care system with the destruction of medical
facilities and doctors and staff shot or abducted.
Hunger is
widespread in Gaza with the Israeli military blocking the entry of aid convoys.
A flier put
out by the organizers of the reading in New Haven said, “On the anniversary of
Martin Luther King Junior’s birth, we refuse to stand by and allow tens of
thousands of our fellow human beings to be flooded, frozen and burned alive by
Israel and the US, as if their lives meant nothing. We join
millions in the US and throughout the world demanding a permanent cease-fire
and massive humanitarian aid be allowed to enter Gaza.”
The Greater
New Haven Peace Council, Veterans for Peace, the New Haven Peace Commission and
the Connecticut Peace and Solidarity Coalition are sponsoring the public
reading.
For more information, email grnhpeacecouncil@gmail.com
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