By now you’ve see the video of Ashley Williams courageous act to push America forward by demanding moral accountability from a person asking to be elected to the highest office in the land. You’ve seen the pictures of the racial composition of the audience attending the fundraiser. By now you’ve read the various stories written about the incident.
I ask you to ponder the words that Martin Luther King wrote in solitary while incarcerated for an act of civil disobedience. There is a popular crime procedural show on television which uses the tag “Ripped from the Headlines.” But the past is talking to us, if we bother to listen.
Some of the themes of King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” deal with what is the role of an outsider in provoking change. Other sections deal with appropriateness of rude, disruptive public demonstrations. King refutes the criticism that negotiation is preferable to direct action. Others argued that the community should be “patient” and accept incremental progress. King argued that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor. There are passages that deal with the appropriateness of breaking laws, fear of backlash from those who profit from the status quo, and whether direct action is a form of extremism. I recommend that you read the entire piece and come to your own conclusion. ( I am especially drawn to the section on “tension.” )
I leave you with one passage for readers to ponder as they consider the makeup of last night’s Clinton fundraiser, the reaction of Hillary Clinton, the crowd in attendance, and some of the hand wringing expressed over Ashley Williams act. Consider what King had to say about the moderate:
First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.
It is easy to get worked up over the threat from authoritarian, but perhaps it is the moderates who are the greatest threat to freedom.