10 ms·

Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963)

481 points by hn_acker 9mo ago

andsoitis 9mo ago
This speech is a masterclass in effecting change through influence rather than authority.
- mothballed 9mo ago
  Groups like Black Panthers and associates of Malcom X were arming up and rearing up to back up their wishes with violence. King certainly gets the credit for oratory influence, but I think a lot of the obsession on overrepresenting it is white washed non-violence 'protest and vote harder' nonsense that the history books like to push hardest when giving role models to the youth in schools. So people like King became elevated but omit the part that there was a very real looming rod waiting and the carrot King offered was only half of the equation.
  - andsoitis 9mo ago
    interesting to ponder is whether violence alone would have had a similar positive outcome? I think I can hold in my head two things: prefer changing minds; realize that major changes are often made real by violence. However, I would hesitate to encourage violence. I hope you also.
    - CGMthrowaway 9mo ago
      The civil rights movement was not a single‑track nonviolent morality thing, and the way it’s taught does often flatten it into something safe, palatable and politically convenient
  - JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
    > it is white washed non-violence 'protest and vote harder' nonsense that the history books like to push My family is largely [EDIT: South Asian] Indian. It’s really not nonsense. > there was a very real looming rod waiting The rod was thinly-veiled racial violence and domestic terrorism. It would have been a route towards exterminationist rhetoric and potentially action on both sides. Not civil rights. Keep in mind, while King was in jail America was in its own telling losing the Cold War. We were behind in space. We drew a stalemate in Korea and were getting routed in Vietnam. A year earlier the Cuban missile crisis had been narrowly averted through diplomacy. King vs. Malcolm is a textbook illustration of the downsides of escalating to violence as a political tool. (And the upsides of refraining from it even if your adversary embraces it.)
    - mothballed 9mo ago
      If the Indians would have gone the King route alone rather than being on reservations they'd have been annihilated and you wouldn't even have been born. The token offering of the reservation was what they got in exchange for not fighting a losing battle to the last man, but the exchange wouldn't have happened had that not been on the table.
      - paavope 9mo ago
        I think the ”Indian” there referred to India the country and Gandhi’s nonviolent protest as background
        mothballed 9mo ago
        Excellent point. Though I find it distasteful when someone uses an ambiguous word counting on you to be able to figure it out from context, then "ha ha you are wrong" downvotes follow when I make a good faith effort to respond to it. It's certainly a weaponization of the word if it is implied the counterparty is naïve when they guessed the wrong one.
      - et-al 9mo ago
        The poster you're responding to might be from the Indian subcontinent and not Native/Indigenous American.
        mothballed 9mo ago
        In US Native/Indigenous usually call themselves either by their tribe or "Indian." White people are the ones that generally use native/indigenous more even though natives call themselves Indian more. Since the context was US civil rights you can see how I came to the conclusion, since it didn't make any sense someone could simply declare their heritage is from an extra-continental nationality and thus I was wrong. In any case in the context of US civil rights, the Indians (native) are a far more reasonable conclusion than Indian (Asian) so at best it is a shared failure of communication.
  - malcolmgreaves 9mo ago
    Thanks for getting out the word on an incredibly historically accurate take on the Civil Rights movement. I think people often forget that _this_ is an incredible part of the movement. We got large-scale non-violent demonstrations and civil disobedience instead of a proliferation of armed protest and possibly something even worse. Many folks were tired of waiting around to be safe and treated justly. Just one too many a cop beating up your father or murdering your brother or lying under oath to send your neighbor away for years. The Black Panthers started armed patrols of their own neighborhoods to protect themselves from racist Oakland police officers. There were growing calls for other Black neighborhoods to use their 2nd amendment rights to arm and defend themselves from a tyrannical government. They were succeeding and spreading. As a direct response, Regan (while governor of CA) eventually signed the Mulford Act of '67 which made carrying firearms in public without a permit illegal. (_And they were stingy when it came to giving these permits to Black folks._)
    - CGMthrowaway 9mo ago
      Re Mulford, you make a brilliant point. Rights are often tolerated until marginalized groups begin to use them effectively. Mulford is to 2A what FACE Act is to 1A. And the FACE Act is about to be used against the peaceful protesters who went into that church in Minnesota the other day.
    - cassepipe 9mo ago
      Self-defense and revolutionary violence are two different things. The former can bring you safety through deterrence, the latter only lead to a violence escalation that the State is almost always most prepared for and better at
  - Rperry2174 9mo ago
    I think the underappreciated part isn't "violence vs non-violence", but the role that malcolm x and black pathners actually played. They weren't primarily organizing armed revolt.. it was more about the idea that they were articulating moral clarity. They were, in the most credible way, refusing to accept endless delay. This allowed them to shift the baseline of what was politically tolerable. In that sense, the movements worked collectively because of a kind of good-cop/bad-cop dynamic. MLK JR offered a path to reform that felt (to some) constructive and legitimate _because_ there was a visible alternative that many people udnerstood as worse. I think violence is already far to prominent today, but I think successful movements do need both moral persuasion (if morality is still a thing that persuades) and _also_ a credible way of making inaction feel unsafe.
    - undeveloper 9mo ago
      > good-cop/bad-cop The first essay in "How to Blow Up a Pipeline" deals with this dichotomy and how it's been used many times. Great read.
    - pear01 9mo ago
      I think we also shouldn't sell the nonviolence short. It wasn't merely nonviolence. It was subjecting yourself openly to state violence and not resisting. It was letting the brutality of the state be made manifest as it washed over you. As the cops abused and beat people who were not responding even remotely in kind. That was part of Malcolm's moral clarity, though in the alternative. He suggested it was immoral to subject yourself or people you loved to such an exercise, tantamount to one of self immolation. Malcolm X essentially advocated a system of sovereignty not unlike the American founders, who of course were violent, not nonviolent. In that way MLK JR really was America's Christ. He was willing to be nailed to the cross if it meant bending the arc towards justice.
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  - cassepipe 9mo ago
    You argument is intuitive but it is also very wrong. In the face of violence, human groups tend to become tighter and more authoritarian with less room for dissenting voices. If you believe that the State was really afraid of revolutionary violence you are terribly misguided, repressing violence with violence is one of the State most ancient task, what all States are most prepared for and good at. Only in rare cases where there is a legitimacy crisis and/or a repressive apparatus unwillingness to do its job, only then regime change may happen.
  - AngryData 9mo ago
    Thank you, everyone always likes to harp on about non-violent resistance, but that really only works when there is a further threat behind not accepting the non-violent demands.
  - bonsai_spool 9mo ago
    > Groups like Black Panthers... This is a little ahistoric, to the point where I'd appreciate if you provided scholarly sources about your overall argument. This is years before the founders of the Black Panther Party went to college: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Panther_Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Panther_Party
  - deleted 9mo ago
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  - jgwil2 9mo ago
    That seems to have become the received wisdom on the subject in certain circles but I do wonder how strong the evidence of this dynamic actually is.
qntty 9mo ago
> Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. For instance, I have been arrested on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong in having an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade. But such an ordinance becomes unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and to deny citizens the First-Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and protest. > I hope you are able to see the distinction I am trying to point out. In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law. I always have to go back to read this part again because I feel like it's so unexpected. You don't really hear anyone saying quite the same thing today.
- verisimi 9mo ago
  > Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. When is it just in its application?
  - dijit 9mo ago
    More often than not, I would argue. There's a reason that due process is a thing, it's more commonly upheld than it's not, no matter what rhetoric you've been spun by a fear-mongering media.
    - jakelazaroff 9mo ago
      As many as 98% of charges end with plea bargains [1]. That's not "due process" in a meaningful sense of the term. [1] https://www.npr.org/2023/02/22/1158356619/plea-bargains-criminal-cases-justice https://www.npr.org/2023/02/22/1158356619/plea-bargains-crim...
      - dijit 9mo ago
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ameliaquining 9mo ago
I reread this every year on this day.
- collinmcnulty 9mo ago
  Likewise, and I always find something new in it. It is always more challenging than I remember it.
decremental 9mo ago
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CGMthrowaway 9mo ago
An alt-right lunatic could use this argument to suggest that those certain and particular J6ers who assembled openly, did not conceal identity, did not use force, nor make forcible entry, nor threaten others, ought never to have been arrested and jailed. But that's crazy talk.
- pstuart 9mo ago
  It was the storming of the capitol itself that was the problem. It was closed to the public and entered by force.
- dayvid 9mo ago
  They didn't have nonviolence trainings ahead of it. It was an unorganized to loosely organized mob, which is the hallmark of most modern movements today
- wat10000 9mo ago
  I’m sure all the police officers who were injured that day would be surprised to learn they did not use force.
  - CGMthrowaway 9mo ago
    You seem to be generalizing a whole group of people. I was careful to say "certain and particular J6ers." Collective punishment is not a thing in the US justice system
    - wat10000 9mo ago
      You were also talking about the ones who were jailed. Did any of those not do at least some of those things listed?
collinmcnulty 9mo ago
I always re-read this on MLK day and learn something new each time. Pull quote for this year “All that is said here grows out of a tragic misconception of time. It is the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time is neutral. It can be used either destructively or constructively. I am coming to feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.” I think this pairs well with and contrasts to the quote that I think many prefer to quote, that “the arc of history is long, but it tends toward justice”.
SilverElfin 9mo ago
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kelseyfrog 9mo ago
I'm forever grateful that Letter From Birmingham Jail was required reading during my highschool education(US history). It came during an impactful time - when I naturally questioned authority, but didn't have the wisdom to discern why or how. Reading it left not a momentary effect, but a life long impression. It's nice to be re-examine it every few years and to notice new details that come with the perspective of recent events. I'm, of course, grateful to Dr King for writing it, but also to the history teacher 25 years ago who decided to include it in the curriculum. When we're surrounded by self re-enforcing authority, it's takes individuals with courage to choose to share texts like these and its effect is appreciated.
njhnjh 9mo ago
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ksymph 9mo ago
Martin Luther King Jr. has had a profound impact on my thinking, and is the historical figure who captivates me above all others. I am glad to see his writing appear on HN. One concept which has pervaded my thinking recently due to personal circumstance is of forgiveness. I tend towards 'forgive but not forget'; I don't feel particularly attached to the past, but neither am I willing to let go of it. In one of his speeches [0] he addresses this directly. He says that forgiving but not forgetting is not true forgiveness; but neither should you ignore one's past transgressions. Forgiveness is being willing to forge a new relationship. Not one built on history, but independent of it. The willingness to give a fresh start to those who seek it. Another, more well-known idea he spoke of (that folks here are likely familiar with) is that of hate only adding to hate. I'll just leave his words here directly: > The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. [0] https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/loving-your-enemies-sermon-delivered-detroit-council-churches-noon-lenten https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/lov...
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corry 9mo ago
What a timeless banger, you fill in the blanks on this part: 'Over and over I have found myself asking: "What kind of people worship here? Who is their God? Where were their voices when the lips of __________ <American political leader> dripped with words of interposition and nullification? Where were they when __________ <American political leader> gave a clarion call for defiance and hatred?"'
jmyeet 9mo ago
I want to call out this part, which is just as relevant today as it was 60+ years ago: > 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. What MLK is talking about how the "white moderate" sides with the oppressors by defending the status quo and choosing "order" over progress. This is the exact schism that currently exists in the Democratic Party today. If you pay attention to American politics, you'll probably have an idea that there is a civil war within the Democratic Party between "liberals" and "leftists". "Liberals", the same "white moderates", defend American imperialism, want to put a smiley face on ICE rather than abolishing it and basically just want to be "Republican lite". These policies are deeply unpoular with the base, such the the net approval of the Democratic Party is at historic lows [1]. This isn't incompetence. It's a choice to favor the donor class and their future job prospects over the interests of their base. A lot of these "white moderates" today get angry at leftists (way more than at Republicans, ironically) for being "single issue voters" about Palestine since that's now become a litmus test for candidates in primary season. First, they don't understand what a single issue voter actually is. Second, and more importantly, there's not a single politician who has a good stance on racial justice and equality, women's rights and so on that has a bad position on Palestine. There is a refusal to see how these things are interconnected. [1]: https://civiqs.com/results/favorable_democrats?uncertainty=true&zoomIn=true&annotations=true https://civiqs.com/results/favorable_democrats?uncertainty=t...
- ndiddy 9mo ago
  You can see it in the Democratic party leadership's response to Renee Good's murder. Cory Booker just proposed ( https://x.com/SenBooker/status/2011795625835114641 https://x.com/SenBooker/status/2011795625835114641 ) that ICE should be reformed by adopting higher training standards and requiring body cameras, when her killer was a 10-year ICE veteran and Good's murder was caught on three different cameras. The only practical response to the situation in Minneapolis is abolishing ICE, firing every employee from the top to the bottom, forbidding by law whatever agency replaces ICE from hiring anyone who has ever previously worked there, and appointing a special prosecutor to vigorously investigate any wrongdoing by former agents. Unfortunately, we're stuck with an opposition party with no clear vision and leadership that would rather do nothing even when their inaction leads to major social unrest and injustice.
labrador 9mo ago
My daughter was about the age of King's daughter when I first read this letter. It had a deep and profound effect and strengthened my commitment to racial and gender equality: when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"
- heresie-dabord 9mo ago
  > "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?" Son, we are all human beings. There's only one way to make sense of it. It's economic slavery. Some people get rich making other people work for nothing... or for very little pay and food. If the rich people keep the poor people struggling in poverty, the poor people may never find the strength to free themselves. They'll be slaves for generations.
tolerance 9mo ago
This letter reads like a relic of democratic optimism that I find difficult to bear. The dichotomy between Martin and Malcolm that people like to draw is tired and ‘undeveloper’ does a better job at criticizing this than I think I could. [1] One of the advantages that Malcolm had over Martin was how deft he was at articulating the spoil in American government. Read “The Ballot or the Bullet”; jump to page nine here for my point: https://bpb-us-e2.wpmucdn.com/sites.middlebury.edu/dist/0/2081/files/2013/02/Malcolm-X-The-Ballot-or-the-Bullet.pdf https://bpb-us-e2.wpmucdn.com/sites.middlebury.edu/dist/0/20... Malcolm representing the side of ‘violence’ in the non-violent/violent dichotomy is him being a realist about the situation that Black people were facing in the US since their arrival in the country. I think a more profound point of his that’s glossed over is that you cannot simply legislate equality into existence and that framing the treatment of Blacks in the US as a ‘civil rights’ issue was a misaddress of the issue. But I think a lot of people are satisfied to settle for the appeal of what Martin and Malcolm's ideologies/methodologies represent on the surface. A matter of rhetoric, I suppose. Both men’s politics seem frozen by men of time in ways that are easy for common observers to grasp. Never mind the evolution of thought that both men experienced in the years (and in the case of Malcolm, months, practically) before their assassinations. So yeah. Riots are the voice of the unheard. Short of five years after this letter people throughout the US spent a “Holy Week” perpetuating that maxim. I don’t know where this remark is going... [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46684113 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46684113
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BrenBarn 9mo ago
Just as relevant now as ever. This part strikes me particularly: > Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. For instance, I have been arrested on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong in having an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade. But such an ordinance becomes unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and to deny citizens the First-Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and protest. I think that one of the great failures of our society and our government has been our willingness to allow large gaps to form between a law and its application. We constantly hear about laws that are "on the books but not enforced". We constantly pass laws to remedy perceived ills, but we don't fund or even specify enforcement mechanisms (or we make such mechanisms ineffective), so the laws just add to the pile of unpaid promissory notes that King refers to in another famous passage. (Ironically the civil rights legislation that King fought for is an example of this.) I also wonder what King would say if we could ask him today about what he says here. In the situation he describes, is it really the ordinance itself that becomes unjust, or can it be that the ordinance itself remains just while it is the enforcement process itself that is unjust? We seem too content to allow decisions about the provisions of a law to be separated from decisions about how those provisions are implemented; we allow innumerable people (e.g., police officers) discretion to make their own decisions about what the law means. This leaves space for those people to interpose their own personal biases and beliefs between the law and its operation. I think we need to fix that.

481 points by hn_acker 9mo ago

andsoitis 9mo ago

This speech is a masterclass in effecting change through influence rather than authority.

mothballed 9mo ago
Groups like Black Panthers and associates of Malcom X were arming up and rearing up to back up their wishes with violence. King certainly gets the credit for oratory influence, but I think a lot of the obsession on overrepresenting it is white washed non-violence 'protest and vote harder' nonsense that the history books like to push hardest when giving role models to the youth in schools. So people like King became elevated but omit the part that there was a very real looming rod waiting and the carrot King offered was only half of the equation.
- andsoitis 9mo ago
  interesting to ponder is whether violence alone would have had a similar positive outcome? I think I can hold in my head two things: prefer changing minds; realize that major changes are often made real by violence. However, I would hesitate to encourage violence. I hope you also.
  - CGMthrowaway 9mo ago
    The civil rights movement was not a single‑track nonviolent morality thing, and the way it’s taught does often flatten it into something safe, palatable and politically convenient
- JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
  > it is white washed non-violence 'protest and vote harder' nonsense that the history books like to push My family is largely [EDIT: South Asian] Indian. It’s really not nonsense. > there was a very real looming rod waiting The rod was thinly-veiled racial violence and domestic terrorism. It would have been a route towards exterminationist rhetoric and potentially action on both sides. Not civil rights. Keep in mind, while King was in jail America was in its own telling losing the Cold War. We were behind in space. We drew a stalemate in Korea and were getting routed in Vietnam. A year earlier the Cuban missile crisis had been narrowly averted through diplomacy. King vs. Malcolm is a textbook illustration of the downsides of escalating to violence as a political tool. (And the upsides of refraining from it even if your adversary embraces it.)
  - mothballed 9mo ago
    If the Indians would have gone the King route alone rather than being on reservations they'd have been annihilated and you wouldn't even have been born. The token offering of the reservation was what they got in exchange for not fighting a losing battle to the last man, but the exchange wouldn't have happened had that not been on the table.
    - paavope 9mo ago
      I think the ”Indian” there referred to India the country and Gandhi’s nonviolent protest as background
      - mothballed 9mo ago
        Excellent point. Though I find it distasteful when someone uses an ambiguous word counting on you to be able to figure it out from context, then "ha ha you are wrong" downvotes follow when I make a good faith effort to respond to it. It's certainly a weaponization of the word if it is implied the counterparty is naïve when they guessed the wrong one.
    - et-al 9mo ago
      The poster you're responding to might be from the Indian subcontinent and not Native/Indigenous American.
      - mothballed 9mo ago
        In US Native/Indigenous usually call themselves either by their tribe or "Indian." White people are the ones that generally use native/indigenous more even though natives call themselves Indian more. Since the context was US civil rights you can see how I came to the conclusion, since it didn't make any sense someone could simply declare their heritage is from an extra-continental nationality and thus I was wrong. In any case in the context of US civil rights, the Indians (native) are a far more reasonable conclusion than Indian (Asian) so at best it is a shared failure of communication.
- malcolmgreaves 9mo ago
  Thanks for getting out the word on an incredibly historically accurate take on the Civil Rights movement. I think people often forget that _this_ is an incredible part of the movement. We got large-scale non-violent demonstrations and civil disobedience instead of a proliferation of armed protest and possibly something even worse. Many folks were tired of waiting around to be safe and treated justly. Just one too many a cop beating up your father or murdering your brother or lying under oath to send your neighbor away for years. The Black Panthers started armed patrols of their own neighborhoods to protect themselves from racist Oakland police officers. There were growing calls for other Black neighborhoods to use their 2nd amendment rights to arm and defend themselves from a tyrannical government. They were succeeding and spreading. As a direct response, Regan (while governor of CA) eventually signed the Mulford Act of '67 which made carrying firearms in public without a permit illegal. (_And they were stingy when it came to giving these permits to Black folks._)
  - CGMthrowaway 9mo ago
    Re Mulford, you make a brilliant point. Rights are often tolerated until marginalized groups begin to use them effectively. Mulford is to 2A what FACE Act is to 1A. And the FACE Act is about to be used against the peaceful protesters who went into that church in Minnesota the other day.
  - cassepipe 9mo ago
    Self-defense and revolutionary violence are two different things. The former can bring you safety through deterrence, the latter only lead to a violence escalation that the State is almost always most prepared for and better at
- Rperry2174 9mo ago
  I think the underappreciated part isn't "violence vs non-violence", but the role that malcolm x and black pathners actually played. They weren't primarily organizing armed revolt.. it was more about the idea that they were articulating moral clarity. They were, in the most credible way, refusing to accept endless delay. This allowed them to shift the baseline of what was politically tolerable. In that sense, the movements worked collectively because of a kind of good-cop/bad-cop dynamic. MLK JR offered a path to reform that felt (to some) constructive and legitimate _because_ there was a visible alternative that many people udnerstood as worse. I think violence is already far to prominent today, but I think successful movements do need both moral persuasion (if morality is still a thing that persuades) and _also_ a credible way of making inaction feel unsafe.
  - undeveloper 9mo ago
    > good-cop/bad-cop The first essay in "How to Blow Up a Pipeline" deals with this dichotomy and how it's been used many times. Great read.
  - pear01 9mo ago
    I think we also shouldn't sell the nonviolence short. It wasn't merely nonviolence. It was subjecting yourself openly to state violence and not resisting. It was letting the brutality of the state be made manifest as it washed over you. As the cops abused and beat people who were not responding even remotely in kind. That was part of Malcolm's moral clarity, though in the alternative. He suggested it was immoral to subject yourself or people you loved to such an exercise, tantamount to one of self immolation. Malcolm X essentially advocated a system of sovereignty not unlike the American founders, who of course were violent, not nonviolent. In that way MLK JR really was America's Christ. He was willing to be nailed to the cross if it meant bending the arc towards justice.
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- cassepipe 9mo ago
  You argument is intuitive but it is also very wrong. In the face of violence, human groups tend to become tighter and more authoritarian with less room for dissenting voices. If you believe that the State was really afraid of revolutionary violence you are terribly misguided, repressing violence with violence is one of the State most ancient task, what all States are most prepared for and good at. Only in rare cases where there is a legitimacy crisis and/or a repressive apparatus unwillingness to do its job, only then regime change may happen.
- AngryData 9mo ago
  Thank you, everyone always likes to harp on about non-violent resistance, but that really only works when there is a further threat behind not accepting the non-violent demands.
- bonsai_spool 9mo ago
  > Groups like Black Panthers... This is a little ahistoric, to the point where I'd appreciate if you provided scholarly sources about your overall argument. This is years before the founders of the Black Panther Party went to college: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Panther_Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Panther_Party
- deleted 9mo ago
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- jgwil2 9mo ago
  That seems to have become the received wisdom on the subject in certain circles but I do wonder how strong the evidence of this dynamic actually is.

qntty 9mo ago

> Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. For instance, I have been arrested on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong in having an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade. But such an ordinance becomes unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and to deny citizens the First-Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and protest. > I hope you are able to see the distinction I am trying to point out. In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law. I always have to go back to read this part again because I feel like it's so unexpected. You don't really hear anyone saying quite the same thing today.

verisimi 9mo ago
> Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. When is it just in its application?
- dijit 9mo ago
  More often than not, I would argue. There's a reason that due process is a thing, it's more commonly upheld than it's not, no matter what rhetoric you've been spun by a fear-mongering media.
  - jakelazaroff 9mo ago
    As many as 98% of charges end with plea bargains [1]. That's not "due process" in a meaningful sense of the term. [1] https://www.npr.org/2023/02/22/1158356619/plea-bargains-criminal-cases-justice https://www.npr.org/2023/02/22/1158356619/plea-bargains-crim...
    - dijit 9mo ago

nedjdkdkdk 9mo ago

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ameliaquining 9mo ago

I reread this every year on this day.

collinmcnulty 9mo ago
Likewise, and I always find something new in it. It is always more challenging than I remember it.

decremental 9mo ago

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CGMthrowaway 9mo ago

An alt-right lunatic could use this argument to suggest that those certain and particular J6ers who assembled openly, did not conceal identity, did not use force, nor make forcible entry, nor threaten others, ought never to have been arrested and jailed. But that's crazy talk.

pstuart 9mo ago
It was the storming of the capitol itself that was the problem. It was closed to the public and entered by force.
dayvid 9mo ago
They didn't have nonviolence trainings ahead of it. It was an unorganized to loosely organized mob, which is the hallmark of most modern movements today
wat10000 9mo ago
I’m sure all the police officers who were injured that day would be surprised to learn they did not use force.
- CGMthrowaway 9mo ago
  You seem to be generalizing a whole group of people. I was careful to say "certain and particular J6ers." Collective punishment is not a thing in the US justice system
  - wat10000 9mo ago
    You were also talking about the ones who were jailed. Did any of those not do at least some of those things listed?

collinmcnulty 9mo ago

I always re-read this on MLK day and learn something new each time. Pull quote for this year “All that is said here grows out of a tragic misconception of time. It is the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time is neutral. It can be used either destructively or constructively. I am coming to feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.” I think this pairs well with and contrasts to the quote that I think many prefer to quote, that “the arc of history is long, but it tends toward justice”.

SilverElfin 9mo ago

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kelseyfrog 9mo ago

I'm forever grateful that Letter From Birmingham Jail was required reading during my highschool education(US history). It came during an impactful time - when I naturally questioned authority, but didn't have the wisdom to discern why or how. Reading it left not a momentary effect, but a life long impression. It's nice to be re-examine it every few years and to notice new details that come with the perspective of recent events. I'm, of course, grateful to Dr King for writing it, but also to the history teacher 25 years ago who decided to include it in the curriculum. When we're surrounded by self re-enforcing authority, it's takes individuals with courage to choose to share texts like these and its effect is appreciated.

njhnjh 9mo ago

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ksymph 9mo ago

Martin Luther King Jr. has had a profound impact on my thinking, and is the historical figure who captivates me above all others. I am glad to see his writing appear on HN. One concept which has pervaded my thinking recently due to personal circumstance is of forgiveness. I tend towards 'forgive but not forget'; I don't feel particularly attached to the past, but neither am I willing to let go of it. In one of his speeches [0] he addresses this directly. He says that forgiving but not forgetting is not true forgiveness; but neither should you ignore one's past transgressions. Forgiveness is being willing to forge a new relationship. Not one built on history, but independent of it. The willingness to give a fresh start to those who seek it. Another, more well-known idea he spoke of (that folks here are likely familiar with) is that of hate only adding to hate. I'll just leave his words here directly: > The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. [0] https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/loving-your-enemies-sermon-delivered-detroit-council-churches-noon-lenten https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/lov...

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corry 9mo ago

What a timeless banger, you fill in the blanks on this part: 'Over and over I have found myself asking: "What kind of people worship here? Who is their God? Where were their voices when the lips of __________ <American political leader> dripped with words of interposition and nullification? Where were they when __________ <American political leader> gave a clarion call for defiance and hatred?"'

jmyeet 9mo ago

I want to call out this part, which is just as relevant today as it was 60+ years ago: > 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. What MLK is talking about how the "white moderate" sides with the oppressors by defending the status quo and choosing "order" over progress. This is the exact schism that currently exists in the Democratic Party today. If you pay attention to American politics, you'll probably have an idea that there is a civil war within the Democratic Party between "liberals" and "leftists". "Liberals", the same "white moderates", defend American imperialism, want to put a smiley face on ICE rather than abolishing it and basically just want to be "Republican lite". These policies are deeply unpoular with the base, such the the net approval of the Democratic Party is at historic lows [1]. This isn't incompetence. It's a choice to favor the donor class and their future job prospects over the interests of their base. A lot of these "white moderates" today get angry at leftists (way more than at Republicans, ironically) for being "single issue voters" about Palestine since that's now become a litmus test for candidates in primary season. First, they don't understand what a single issue voter actually is. Second, and more importantly, there's not a single politician who has a good stance on racial justice and equality, women's rights and so on that has a bad position on Palestine. There is a refusal to see how these things are interconnected. [1]: https://civiqs.com/results/favorable_democrats?uncertainty=true&zoomIn=true&annotations=true https://civiqs.com/results/favorable_democrats?uncertainty=t...

ndiddy 9mo ago
You can see it in the Democratic party leadership's response to Renee Good's murder. Cory Booker just proposed ( https://x.com/SenBooker/status/2011795625835114641 https://x.com/SenBooker/status/2011795625835114641 ) that ICE should be reformed by adopting higher training standards and requiring body cameras, when her killer was a 10-year ICE veteran and Good's murder was caught on three different cameras. The only practical response to the situation in Minneapolis is abolishing ICE, firing every employee from the top to the bottom, forbidding by law whatever agency replaces ICE from hiring anyone who has ever previously worked there, and appointing a special prosecutor to vigorously investigate any wrongdoing by former agents. Unfortunately, we're stuck with an opposition party with no clear vision and leadership that would rather do nothing even when their inaction leads to major social unrest and injustice.

labrador 9mo ago

My daughter was about the age of King's daughter when I first read this letter. It had a deep and profound effect and strengthened my commitment to racial and gender equality: when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"

heresie-dabord 9mo ago
> "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?" Son, we are all human beings. There's only one way to make sense of it. It's economic slavery. Some people get rich making other people work for nothing... or for very little pay and food. If the rich people keep the poor people struggling in poverty, the poor people may never find the strength to free themselves. They'll be slaves for generations.

tolerance 9mo ago

This letter reads like a relic of democratic optimism that I find difficult to bear. The dichotomy between Martin and Malcolm that people like to draw is tired and ‘undeveloper’ does a better job at criticizing this than I think I could. [1] One of the advantages that Malcolm had over Martin was how deft he was at articulating the spoil in American government. Read “The Ballot or the Bullet”; jump to page nine here for my point: https://bpb-us-e2.wpmucdn.com/sites.middlebury.edu/dist/0/2081/files/2013/02/Malcolm-X-The-Ballot-or-the-Bullet.pdf https://bpb-us-e2.wpmucdn.com/sites.middlebury.edu/dist/0/20... Malcolm representing the side of ‘violence’ in the non-violent/violent dichotomy is him being a realist about the situation that Black people were facing in the US since their arrival in the country. I think a more profound point of his that’s glossed over is that you cannot simply legislate equality into existence and that framing the treatment of Blacks in the US as a ‘civil rights’ issue was a misaddress of the issue. But I think a lot of people are satisfied to settle for the appeal of what Martin and Malcolm's ideologies/methodologies represent on the surface. A matter of rhetoric, I suppose. Both men’s politics seem frozen by men of time in ways that are easy for common observers to grasp. Never mind the evolution of thought that both men experienced in the years (and in the case of Malcolm, months, practically) before their assassinations. So yeah. Riots are the voice of the unheard. Short of five years after this letter people throughout the US spent a “Holy Week” perpetuating that maxim. I don’t know where this remark is going... [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46684113 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46684113

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BrenBarn 9mo ago

Just as relevant now as ever. This part strikes me particularly: > Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. For instance, I have been arrested on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong in having an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade. But such an ordinance becomes unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and to deny citizens the First-Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and protest. I think that one of the great failures of our society and our government has been our willingness to allow large gaps to form between a law and its application. We constantly hear about laws that are "on the books but not enforced". We constantly pass laws to remedy perceived ills, but we don't fund or even specify enforcement mechanisms (or we make such mechanisms ineffective), so the laws just add to the pile of unpaid promissory notes that King refers to in another famous passage. (Ironically the civil rights legislation that King fought for is an example of this.) I also wonder what King would say if we could ask him today about what he says here. In the situation he describes, is it really the ordinance itself that becomes unjust, or can it be that the ordinance itself remains just while it is the enforcement process itself that is unjust? We seem too content to allow decisions about the provisions of a law to be separated from decisions about how those provisions are implemented; we allow innumerable people (e.g., police officers) discretion to make their own decisions about what the law means. This leaves space for those people to interpose their own personal biases and beliefs between the law and its operation. I think we need to fix that.