Martin Luther King

Last week I attended a lecture by the Jesuit priest peace activist Reverend John Dear. I hesitate to use the word "radical" to describe him, because the word is so often used pejoratively, but there is no other way for me to characterize him. If he hadn't been a member of the Catholic Jesuit order I would have brushed him off as a pot-smoking, guitar strumming hippie. He certainly has the credentials: 75 arrests, months spent behind bars, death threats... I suppose that's what happens when you walk into a military air base and start wailing on their fighter jets with a hammer (which he did, and that's only the tip of the iceberg).  Read More »

The American Dream, what is it really?  Read More »

On April 3rd 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King gave a speech in support of a strike by sanitation workers in Memphis Tennessee. He gave the speech because – during the course of his life as an activist – he had come across a number of reasons to conclude that the struggle for the recognition of his rights was intertwined with a number of other causes related to basic human dignities.  Read More »

"[W]hen you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading 'white' and 'colored'; when your first name becomes 'nigger', your middle name becomes 'boy' (however old you are) and your last name becomes 'John', and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted my night by the fact that you are a Negro, livin c  Read More »