Betrayed by Silence

“I AM NOT A SAINT, UNLESS YOU think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying,” Nelson Mandela said reflectively. It’s hardly an accident that the former South African human rights champion looked on Martin Luther King Jr. as one of his guiding lights. Both men were flawed, yet they endured against significant odds, believing in their ideals when others thought they should pull back. Robert Louis Stevenson would have agreed with Mandela’s observation: “Saints are sinners who kept on going.”All this week we have been dealing with the life of Martin Luther King Jr., noting his power of rhetoric and ideals, his refined sense of justice, and his deep understanding of human nature. There is ever the tendency to turn dead heroes into saints, but we had better be sure how we define saints if we travel down that road.We quote King, admire him, and in many ways wish to be like him. But just before we do that, we must consider what it would mean. He had no halo, but he did possess a burning light of illumination in his head that continually placed him at odds with his generation.He was one of the first to speak out against the war in Vietnam, but not for reasons we might expect. Yes, he turned his back on violence, but his chief reason for pessimism about that Asian conflict was how it had sucked the air out of everything else, leaving legislated ideals unfulfilled. “This war has eviscerated the national anti-poverty program,” he mused, and he was right. Lyndon Johnson’s vow to eliminate poverty in a generation was lost forever due to a protracted battle thousands of miles away.And how would all those people who admire him if they understood that he was a democratic socialist, much like Bernie Sanders is today? In truth, King was a radical, one who believed that the political and financial systems were purposely geared to reward the wealthy at the expense of everyone else. Such views made him unpopular. An August 1966 poll discovered that 66% of Americans had an unfavourable view of him. His call for a transformative redistribution of political power and financial wealth was deemed as anarchy to many.And yet there is something remarkably relevant about King’s outlook today. We know where he would be. He would be standing with the workers locked out of their places of employment. He would rail against the fact that half of the world’s wealth belonged to only 63 people. He would side with the homeless and demand proper care of refugees. And he would call for the kind of political reform that would extend power to the oppressed so that they could alter their own fate. He would call for international development instead of military exploits. These and many more issues would feel the sting of his rhetoric.“The time has come when silence is betrayal,” he mused to an audience shortly before he died. It remains difficult to locate any politician today who would take such a stand. And yet he is widely praised in the modern era. Clearly what people say they respect is not necessarily what they desire. When he openly pushed for government to guarantee a person’s right to work he was vilified, yet today the need for such an action is more necessary than ever.It’s true that King had a dream, but he also had nightmares – worries that unless the world fought for equality and financial equity, all he struggled for would be lost. Is his dream alive in us today? Not unless we have a personal stake in changing a politics that rewards the elite and a financial system that degrades the poor. “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter,” he preached. He never stopped raising his voice; we have remained in our silence too long. No dream becomes a reality unless we pay the full cost for those visions. King became a saint, not because he was flawless, but because he was restless and never ceased in his struggle for fairness. We presently honour King by naming a day after him. We’d be better served if we built a future on his architecture of justice.