"White-supremacist sentiment is being proclaimed again after decades of being too disreputable to say out loud. Perversion of the Christian Gospel to justify hatred and violence is as widespread as it was when white churches defended racial segregation as holy. And now, as then, advocates for "law and order" regard protest as insurrection and protesters as terrorists (or as George Wallace used to call them, anarchists)."
"Millions of Americans seeking a way to cope with the Donald Trump administration and its excesses need to rediscover the legacy of nonviolent protest MLK embodied. Like his role model Mahatma Gandhi, King taught that firm but civil disobedience in the face of injustice is both powerful and difficult to defeat, in part because it denies oppressors the excuse of personal or institutional self-defense and exposes the brutality of those who seek to provoke violence."
"Although MLK was not present on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, on March 7, 1965, many of his disciples were, and televised images of their being clubbed to the pavement and attacked by police dogs that day probably did more to advance the cause of civil-rights legislation than anything that happened during the many decades of Jim Crow."
Observing the Martin Luther King Jr. federal holiday often resembled a backward look at a largely successful struggle, with occasional reminders of unfinished civil-rights work but little urgency. In 2026 an aggressively reactionary regime obstructs and seeks to reverse social change, echoing the southern local and state governments that fought and jailed MLK. White-supremacist sentiment has reemerged publicly and parts of Christianity are being perverted to justify hatred and violence. Advocates of "law and order" treat protest as insurrection and protesters as terrorists. Millions need to rediscover the legacy of nonviolent protest because disciplined civil disobedience denies oppressors excuses and exposes brutality, as televised violence at Selma advanced legislation.
Read at Intelligencer
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