[Peace-discuss] Fwd: AWARE ON THE AIR recalls M. L. King

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Addendum] In MLK's final book, "Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?" (1967), he declared a guaranteed annual income necessary to abolish poverty:

"I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective - the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income." (Democrats as well as Republicans successfully ended that "wide discussion" in the years after King's death.)

***

Begin forwarded message:

> AWARE ON THE AIR for 1/21/14 – INTRO
> 
> Good evening & welcome to AWARE on the Air, presented by members and friends of AWARE, the Anti-War Anti-Racism Effort of Champaign-Urbana [IL], a local peace group.
> 
> I'm Carl Estabrook, and it's the fourth week of 2014: the week of celebration of the life of assassinated civil rights leader Martin Luther King... 
> 
> ...that is, a week when King's anti-war, anti-racist, and anti-capitalist radicalism has to be played down, in order to accommodate the vicious military and economic policies of the Obama administration. 
> 
> M. L. King attacked America's wars for economic control of Southeast Asia – what we continue to call the Vietnam War - the precursor for President Obama's wars for economic control of Southwest Asia.
> 
> King also attacked capitalism, which he saw as the source of those wars:
> 
> King said, “one day we must ask the question, ‘Why are there 40 million poor people in America?’ And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy and to ask questions about the whole society.” Elsewhere he added, “call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God’s children.”
> 
> In fact, since King's time, the distribution of wealth in the U.S. has moved - acceleratingly - in the other direction. And war and rumors of war are used to distract Americans from that fact – while our lives are confiscated by a small group of evil people in charge of our society – the 1% (actually only a fraction of 1% of a U.S. population of 300 million). 
> 
> King also attacked America's imperialist wars directly. In his largely ignored speech “Beyond Vietnam” - delivered one year before he was assassinated - he pointed out that the United States was the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”
> 
> That was not an accident of the Vietnam War era. American presidents as commanders in chief of the U.S. military, have killed, wounded and made homeless well over 20 million human beings in the last 50 years, mostly civilians.
> 
> And it continues. President Obama has killed thousands of people, including hundreds of children, with drones alone. And a secret American army of 70,000 kidnappers and killers – the “Special Operations Command” - is active in 130 of the 195 countries in the world. It reports only to the president's National Security Council.
> 
> Martin Luther King is a model for AWARE and the hundreds of similar groups around the country that oppose the on-going killing by the U.S. government. 
> 
> ###