Good morning.

In April 1967 Martin Luther King gave a speech at Riverside Church in New York City to a group called Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. Here are some of his words:

“The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality we will find ourselves organizing ‘clergy and laymen concerned’ committees for the next generation.…We will be marching and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy. …We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

A year later Dr. King went to Memphis to support a strike of sanitation workers and was assassinated. From City College, where my real major was organizing against the Vietnam War, I watched working people in the streets of Harlem react with fury. Nearby, Harlem residents had protested Columbia University’s plans to expand into Morningside Park to build a gym. Columbia students supported them, were attacked by the police, and occupied the campus, demanding that the gym project be abandoned and that Columbia sever its ties with the Institute of Defense Analysis, an arm of the Department of Defense..

1,000 CCNY students, faculty, and campus workers marched down Amsterdam Avenue to support the Columbia strike. We were white, black, native American, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Haitian, Japanese, Chinese men and women, united as one against racism and an imperialist war. Chanting US Out of Vietnam Now and No Racist Gym, we were greeted by a giant roar from the Columbia strikers occupying an overpass above us. This was the same spring that 10 million workers, sparked by a student strike, were occupying almost every major production and transportation facility in France. In the US, militant black workers, many of them Vietnam veterans, were leading strikes in auto and other major industries.

Fast forward 40 years. The gym was not built, but Columbia has spread its tentacles over much of Harlem. We are still attending the endless anti-war rallies Dr. King spoke of. In Los Angeles, a hospital bearing Dr. King’s name, built in response to civil unrest, has been shut down. It’s easy to be cynical. However, I share Dr. King’s outlook of hope and confidence in ordinary people. We are in desperate need of a new movement led by black and Latino workers, immigrant workers, and others among the most oppressed in our society. Through our church’s Peace & Civil Liberties Committee and our Multiracial Development Committee (which plans to support a union organizing drive of car wash workers), and by other means, I believe we in this congregation can and will play a role in building and supporting such a movement.