[Peace] 5pm today 1/17: free film at Art Theater: King's "The Other America"

[Stuart Levy]

A discussion [at 5pm today] and free film showing [at 6pm] of
Martin Luther King's April 14, 1967 speech, "The Other America".
I didn't know this speech, but it sounds very good and still apt.

[Note this was in Karen's list of events from yesterday, but
listed the 6pm film start time.  It'll be worth arriving earlier for the
5pm discussion.  Free event, sponsored by the UofI Community Engagement office.]

A few quotes:

"We are struggling now [april 1967] for genuine equality.  And it's much easier
to integrate a lunch counter than it is to guarantee a livable income and a
good solid job. ... Economically the Negro is worse off today than he was 15
and 20 years ago... the unemployment rate among Negroes is twice that of Whites
[while at one time it had been about the same] ... Certain conditions continue
to exist in our society which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn
riots.  But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard."
 

"There are those, often sincere ... [who say] we should slow up, be nice,
continue to pray, and problems will work themselves out [...] in a hundred
or two hundred years.   ...  I think there is an answer to that myth.
Time is neutral and can be used either constructively or destructively.
And I'm absolutely convinced that the forces of  ill-will in our nation,
the extreme rightists in our nation, have often used time much more
effectively than the forces of good will.  And it may well be that
we will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic
words of the bad people and the violent actions of the bad people,
but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people
who sit around and say wait on time.  Somewhere we must come to see that social
progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability.  It comes through the
tireless efforts and the persistent work of dedicated individuals.  And without
this hard work time itself becomes an ally of the primitive forces of social
stagnation."
 
"Now I said I wasn't gonna talk about Vietnam, but I can't make a speech
without mentioning some of the problems that we face there because I think this
war has diverted attention from civil rights.  It has strengthened the forces
of reaction in our country and has brought to the forefront the military
industrial complex that even President Eisenhower warned us against at one
time.  And above all, it is destroying human lives.  It's destroying the lives
of thousands of the young promising men of ournation. It's destroying the lives
of little boys and little girls in Vietnam."