Olive Branch Interfaith Peace Partnership

Excerpt of a Lecture by Professor Warren Goldstein, University of Hartford

1. Means and ends are not only inextricably intertwined; corrupt, hateful, or violent means produce corrupt, hateful, violent ends. Only loving, respectful, non-violent means can produce comparable ends—though they may also fail. King challenges and trumps Malcolm X’s “by any means necessary,” which is morally shallow in comparison.
2. Martin Luther King’s career dissolves the distinction between “idealism” and “realism.” A crusader for human dignity and brotherhood on a grand scale, seeking to overcome 340 years of American history, King always sought the most effective tactics, the best public relations, and he knew the necessity of nonstop fundraising. He was an American pragmatist—as well as our most eloquent idealist.
3. It takes creative, nonviolent pressure to expose the “hidden tension” and injustice “that is already alive,” in the form of an “obnoxious, negative peace.” Appeals to “law and order” nearly always privilege unjust social arrangements that serve the powerful. Those seeking change cannot be afraid of “creative tension,” for that is what produces negotiation and change. Anything less produces “promises,” rather than action.
4. Movements for social change require as much psychological and spiritual change in the powerless as they do in the powerful. Even for the truly powerless, change is more difficult than continuing the status quo. Birmingham’s black establishment had gained certain advantages by its accommodation to segregation. Any movement for social change will challenge the passivity of those who prefer the devil they know to the one they don’t know.
5. With creative, determined, passionate, persistent, self-disciplined and committed tactics, the powerless can transform themselves and their society.
6. The news media are key to any effort at social change; they are also completely unreliable, and always tend to support the status quo. Only a large movement can change this dynamic, and not always, or for long. The “noise” made by the civil rights movement reached from Birmingham jails to the White House—and changed both.
7. King distinguishes theologically and socially between just and unjust laws, teaching us when to obey and when to resist.
8. The powerful will always call activists “outsiders” and “extremists.” King shows “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” so there can be no outsiders. Similarly, King embraces the “extremist” label, since it appears “the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.”