When Martin Luther King, Jr. came out unequivocally against the war in Viet Nam, he was attacked from all sides, including strong criticism from many of his allies. They said that civil rights and peace didn’t mix, that he was hurting the cause of his own people. King responded that he understood their concerns, but nonetheless it saddened him. It saddened him, he said, because it meant that his allies didn’t really know him, and that they didn’t really know the world they lived in.
It’s easy to forget the revolutionary Martin Luther King when the dominant narrative—entombed in the gauzy haze of official memory—is such a sugary and uplifting story:
Once upon a time there were some mean white people (in the South) and some bad laws. But then a Saint came along and told us to love one another. He led a bus boycott, had a dream, gave a speech, and won a peace prize. Then, we were all better, and he got shot.
It’s sweet and simple, and in large part untrue. The real Martin Luther King, Jr. was an activist for just thirteen years, a loving and angry pilgrim in pursuit of justice, and he grew and changed dramatically each year of his journey. King’s speeches and sermons in the last years of his life are a chronicle of struggle, set-back, re-thinking, connecting issues, seeking new allies, going deeper, fighting harder.
In the last years of his life he was fighting explicitly for economic and global justice connected to racial justice. He spoke of the link between a rotting shack and a rotted-out democracy, between imperial ambitions abroad and betrayal of justice at home. He noted that the American soul was poisoned by war and racism, and raised the question of whether America would go to hell for her sins.
Concretely he said that the American people bore the greatest responsibility for ending the war since our government bore the responsibility for starting and sustaining it. He called the U.S. “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today,” and argued that he could not condemn desperate, angry young men who picked up guns until he first condemned his own government. He urged resistance to the war and counseled youngsters not to join the armed services. And he said the U.S. was on the wrong side of the world revolution, that we would need to rekindle a revolutionary spirit in order to create a “revolution in values”—against militarism and racism and extreme materialism—that could lead to restructuring our economic and social system top to bottom.
In the spirit of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. we have to dare to see the world as it really is, and then to choose justice over tribe or nation or petty self-interest. We need to organize and mobilize against illegal wars of conquest and domination, send a sharp warning right now as the powerful mobilize to bomb Iran under the banner of the same exhausted lies and rationalizations, and press the demand for peace in concrete terms:
1. Withdraw all mercenary forces immediately.
2. Set a date-certain—within three months—for all U.S. troops to leave Iraq and Afghanistan.
3. Dismantle all U.S. military bases in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.
4. Renounce all claims to the natural resources of Iraq.
5. Call for the creation of an independent international commission to assess and monitor the amount of reparations the U.S. owes to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan.
This is only a start, and it is still a choice—solidarity with all people, or endless war and death. As King reminded us, those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.
Bill Ayers 
MLK Jr. would be ashamed of such a despicable terrorist such as yourself. You have no right to speak on behalf of a man who engaged in non-violent protest when you did the exact opposite. I too, am against the Iraq War, and I am sickened to be in your company on that issue. However, I would never do the awful things that you have done. You are no better than the radical Islamists.
You are a sad and pathetic excuse for a man. Whether you like it or not, there is a God in heaven who is watching you and all the violence and hatered you have promoted. You have made hate and jealousy a core element of your being and you will pay for this choice, either in this world or the one to come. I fear for your soul in the hands of a just and angry God.
I agree, the gentrification (or as Cornell West said recently, the Santa-Claus-ification) of Martin Luther King is something we ought to resist actively. We don’t often recognize that we have a profound tradition of indigenous radicalism in the United States, so it’s very easy to feel like there’s no precedent for any meaningful change. We ought to realize that it’s possible to trace the anti-war movement back to the War of 1812, or perhaps even earlier, and that figures like King were very much a part of it. Anyway, I’ve been thinking about all this since I’m going to teach about “anti-war literature” this week…and I guess I feel compelled to comment just because the only other response is so abominable. Okay, that’s all.
Hey, Bill, just finished reading your book (again) and found it even more relevant than the first reading — I was raised Mennonite — always thought we were a “traditional peace” church, but my, my, my, how things have changed. The official position of the Mennonite Church on the Iraq war reads something like this: “Ummm, we’re against the war because we’re Mennonites, but we don’t want to upset anyone, so how about we support the troops?” Unbelievable. I feel sorry for the troops. I am embarrassed that American citizens think they have no employment option other than the military. But I do not, and will never, support them because they are part and parcel of the murderous military machine, used to promote American corporate interests around the world, an idea and action which I oppose with all my heart, mind and soul. Don’t ever give up — there’s a lot of support out here for you.
I cannot wait until all hippies expire and are no longer a threat to the safety of our country. Mr. Ayers, you are a lying no good bum.
This you speak about is so true, I can remember march as a child for my civil rights in Chicago, and back then as I do now wanted so hope that our leaders and the average person would listen to the cry of people wanted to connect to our great country without being treated as second class citizens. But to love one another and see each other true worth to the America dream. I am now 55 years old and our country is not any closer to peace in our country or outside. When will the madness stop. Is the draft the only way to go to stop Chicken Hawks from throwing our country away for their own gains and interests. After 911 everyone was looking at each other and our country is made of all colors and religions. We could have been for growth and peace of our Nation. As a twenty year Veteran it saddess me to see that the middle class is not paying attention to the state of affairs and the restrictions that is put on them, and that econmical power is going to only 1% of Americans. I don’t think it’s a black thing or a white thing. It’s a Rich or Poor Thing and we need to spend more revenue on health, education , and welfare of our people of America and this market of wealth and control for the few. Bring our MEN and Women HOME.
You are sooo tedious, Willy.
Never one for actually making a case, you rely on treacly one-liners that appeal only to under-educated useful idiots.
Are you even capable of making an argument?
Wait did any of the anti-communist and terrorist commentators read the blog entry?
“In the spirit of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. we have to dare to see the world as it really is, and then to choose justice over tribe or nation or petty self-interest.”
True words.
“It’s not that Liberals are ignorant, it’s that everything they know is wrong.” – Ronald Reagan
I think that sums up Bill Ayers pretty well.
A living example of the suicidal conceit of affluence, Ayers is a product of a wealthy society (and an extremely wealthy family) whose wealth caused him to become unmoored from the reality of the world and lost in an echo chamber of self-righteous and self-destructive academia.
Wealth has sheltered him from the consequences of bad ideas, and allowed these destructive, horrific ideas to fester and grow.
The reality is that the natural state of the world is ugly – life is naturally “nasty, brutish and short.”
Thankfully Free Western civilization – which is what Ayers ultimately decries – has been responsible for the longest and most successful respite from this natural state, and has brought the largest amount of happiness to the largest numbers of people in the history of the world.
Are we perfect? No, of course not. Man is not perfectable. But rational people can recognize the difference between the freedom, long lives and affluence that we have today in the free west and the slavery, short, bloody lives and poverty that exists elsewhere in the world, and in virtually the entire world prior to the emergence of free western thought.
On the other hand, these warped concepts of “social justice” remain firmly tethered to their roots in Marxist thought – the same Marxist thought which brought us the greatest humanitarian horrors the world has ever known. (Stalinist purges, Cultural Revolution, Pol Pot massacres, North Korea today, and the list goes on).
And these same “ideals” led Bill Ayers and friends to believe that “good” was served by robbing banks, killing two policemen and a security guard and bombing (yes – bombing!) innocent Americans.
I wonder sometimes how intelligent people can be so blind. Don’t you people get it? It’s the ideas, stupid!
The Free West has fought and won two wars against the twin evil corruptions of western thought (Communism and Fascism) in the last century, and as long as people like Bill Ayers further corrupt young minds in the same modes of warped thought, it is guaranteed that we will have to fight more.
If the people who believe like Bill Ayers ever finally get their wish, the consequences of their wrong thinking will become obvious – but it will be too late. The true horror and the real dark ages will come when these types finally achieve their vision of “social justice”. Everyone will be either equally enslaved, or equally dead – true justice indeed.
Fortunately there remain people who are clear in their understanding of the real world. People who recognize that to protect the greater good of the most benevolent (not perfect, but largely benevolent) civilization in the history or man, “evil” needs to be recognized and fought.
Whether that evil be in the form of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, or Hussein (whose heroes were Stalin and Hitler), fighting evil while it can still be fought is the only moral course.
Bill Ayers is an intelligent, gifted individual, who has wasted his considerable intellectual capacity in the pursuit of evil “ideals” which he believes to be good. It’s a real tragedy.
End the war per Billy Ayers means the US losing the war, which is exactly what Bill the A-hole wants. Apparently Billy and his leftist ilk want to see millions more slaughtered in the Middle East this time just like what happened in SE Asia when the US Military pulled out. Ayers is the devil and hopefully will leave this earth sooner rather than later. The world will be better off without him.