King wrote.Īs we’ve seen with Congress’s failed efforts to pass voting rights legislation, you can’t just keep negotiating with people who don’t want to work with you. “Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.… I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth,” Dr. The reverend believed that done correctly, direct action could foster the “tension” necessary to transcend back-and-forth negotiations and ultimately force change. King’s comments on the benefit of direct action versus negotiation are instructive in our current moment. King’s example, my fellow activists and I are engaging in direct action and other liberation strategies like mutual aid events.ĭr. On college campuses like mine, students are pushing their administrations to divest their endowments from industries that kill the planet. Already, we are taking the steps necessary to move the needle on progress. King, who said, “We have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure,” many in my generation believe that direct action is a better path forward than waiting patiently for administrations and institutions to make the changes we need. King called “the status quo.” He discussed how the church and elected officials tend to reinforce the status quo - the existing state of affairs - rather than advocating for rapid or radical change. Relatedly, one of the biggest frustrations in my organizing work has been the challenge of making people and institutions see beyond what Dr. Nonetheless, Black and POC communities are still leading the fight for a safe, sustainable, healthy future. Climate change and pollution have a disproportionate impact on communities of color- the very same communities that have the least amount of resources to protect their health, homes, and human rights. Take the fight for environmental justice. Yet, in so many instances, that’s not the case. It is crucial to understand that the moral and ethical responsibility of overturning oppression should fall on the oppressors, not on the oppressed.

King wrote in his famous letter, addressing those Americans who stayed quiet in the face of the glaring racial prejudice of the 1960s.

“We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people,” Dr.

Birmingham martin luther king