
Dr. Martin Luther King giving his “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington in Washington, D.C., on 28 August 1963. Photo by Rowland Scherman. Wikipedia.
His voice sent shivers up my spine. No other can equal its vibrancy, intensity and powerful emotion, honed by years of outrage, refined according to the fire-breathing sermons of black preachers. The power of that voice was certainly partly responsible for his murder.
We women know that if we speak powerfully, we are in danger. Young women’s voices are too light and frail, but by the time our voices mature into something resonant and disturbing, we may have learned not to use them to any effect.
This country reacted violently to destroy Dr. King’s enormously successful campaign against racism, fueled by his voice, but the violence directed against him was as king anti-segregationist. White power in this country, mostly lodged in D.C., may have already realized that segregation was going to have to go—if slowly, with many stumbles.
Attacking the war machine which is U.S. foreign policy is much more dangerous, and this may have figured in Dr. King’s delay in attacking the war in Vietnam, although fearing to alienate President Lyndon Johnson, an ally on Civil Rights, is the more obvious reason. Dr. King had never tried to protect himself, saying, “I may even die. But if I die in the struggle, I want it said, ‘He died to make men free.'” In this line from the Battle Hymn of the Republic, “He” is Jesus Christ, another man in another time who died for challenging authority.
We are no closer to dismantling the war machine now than we were when Dr. King was murdered in 1968. War after war after has tormented the following years. Millions of civilians—men, women and children—have been murdered all over the world by our military. In earlier wars, troops saw the results of their carnage. Now, with the use of drones, we are able to ignore it. The peace movement that began in the 1960’s seems to have withered away.
My state, New Mexico, is about to dramatically increase its production of plutonium pits, the triggers in nuclear bombs. Two small advocacy groups here try to garner public opposition to this dangerous development, already financed with billions of Federal dollars. But the opposition seems small, weak, and poorly organized.
Where are the descendants of the Freedom Riders who took buses south in 1961 to register black voters? Three were murdered, others beaten and harassed. Who is willing now to take these risks to try to preserve the future of the world?
One answer among many is provided by a study of the way we treat the mentally ill—as many protesters are thought to be by those who oppose change. In Robert Whitaker’s searing book, Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and The Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill, collusion between mental health professionals at all levels and the industry that produces such “antipsychotic” drugs as Haldol, Zyprexa, Risperidone and Olanzapine, the corruption of drug testing to ensure new drugs are certified to fill the coffers of this industry, and cold-hearted experiments on some of the most vulnerable among us, the number of those labeled schizophrenic has also denuded our citizenry of individuals who might have turned their unconventional behavior and beliefs to the cause of ending war.
Instead, the number of those we have abandoned to our own fear and to the depredations of bad science has multiplied, stuffing drug treatment programs and psychiatric clinics, hospitals and doctors’ offices, and finally jails and homeless shelters.
By jolting contrast, Keropudas hospital in Northern Finland has developed a treatment method that does not rely on doping. Instead, open dialogue, kindness, a place to live and good food have resulted over time in the act that “schizophrenia has now disappeared.” At the end of five years of this treatment, 79 percent of these patients were asymptomatic and 80 percent were in school, at work or looking for work. Only 20 percent were on government disability.
In the U.S., Whitaker proves that “the drug companies and academic psychiatry had entered into a storytelling partnership” and “in 2008 antipsychotics became the top revenue-generating class of medicines in the United States.”
Could this widespread use of drugs (as, notoriously, in the Soviet Union) have disabled some individuals who might have led the charge for peace?
We will never know. What we do know is the deep corruption and greed that have caused enormous amounts of human suffering.
Maybe the outcry over Oxycodone is only the beginning.
But we need that voice.
You have tied together two interesting trains of thought. It is sad that young people today fear using their speaking voices, because of the history of violence for such an overt expression of their deepest feelings. This is the same generation that avoids participation in civic organizations and churches.
I have several outspoken grandchildren who are not afraid, in fact my oldest has just had her second book published on the subject of resistance. This one is titled “Resistance in the Bluegrass” by Farrah Alexander, with a forward by Attica Scott, a Ky. State Representative. Her first book was “Raising the Resistance” – a mother’s guide to practical activism. So not every voice is silent.
Your secondary reason of drugs being the cause of restraint is an interesting thought which I’ve never considered, but will certainly ponder on it.