The Red Brick Times

Dear President Obama:

As you consider the actions of the United States both at home and abroad, please invoke the following:

"...before a protest can be approved by responsible leadership, they must answer the following questions:

1. Do we have a just grievance, or is our purpose merely to create confusion for its own sake, as a form of revenge?

2. Have we first attempted to eliminate the problem by negotiation, petition and appropriate appeals to authority?

3. Having found these channels useless or forcibly closed to us when we embark upon any type of lawbreaking, are we prepared to accept the consequences society will inflict and to maintain, even under punishment, a sense of brotherhood?

4. Do we have a clear program to relieve injustice to ourselves without inflicting injustice upon others, and is that program reasonable and grounded in the ethics and best traditions of our society?

In establishing these prerequisites for direct action, the civil rights movement meets its responsibility to society and fulfills its obligations to democratic principle.

It is an axiom of nonviolent action and democracy that when any group struggles properly and justly to achieve its own rights, it enlarges the rights of all. It is this element that makes both democracy and nonviolent action self-renewing and creative."

By: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

From a speech on May 20, 1965.
Posted 6:14 AM by Andy (0) comments

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