<html><body><span style="font-family:Verdana; color:#000000; font-size:10pt;"><div>Brian K is organizing plz reply to him, Brian is using his own 'distribution email list' so, get on it if you want to discus this, IS eden<br></div><div><br></div><div>Hey folks,</div><div><br></div><div>Just wanted to send out an update on MLK Day at Occupy Boston, and put out a call for some <b>help with organizing of it.</b></div><div><br></div><div>Thanks
to the Media working group, we have been granted usage of the per-reserved weekly Community Gathering space for Monday Jan 16th. This
means we have St. Paul's Cathedral (right on Tremont st. near Park St /
the Common) from 6-8:30pm on MLK Day. It also means we have $100 budget
for food and/or refreshments. The only problem is that we have only 10
days to organize something.</div> <div><br></div><div>So the burning question is: <b>What should we do for MLK Day?</b> We could have<span style="line-height:19px;font-size:12px;font-family:Arial;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline"> presentations, workshops, facilitated conversations, open </span><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;line-height:19px"></span><span style="line-height:19px;font-size:12px;font-family:Arial;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline">dialogues, film clip screenings,</span> or all of the above. </div> <div><br></div><div><div>Some of the ideas I have heard so far: </div><div><ul><li><span style="">"we could discuss what it meant for King to become radicalized, and by extension, </span><i style="">what it means for any of us to become radicalized</i><span style="">. </span><i style="">What does that mean today vs. King's time?"</i></li><li><span style="">An
interesting thing is that MLK via Thoreau relates to John Brown.
Thoreau too, as an ancestor of Occupy civil disobedience, and of MLK's
tactics, is more radical than realized.</span></li><li><span style="">A
teach-in using one of Rev. King's speeches (I suggest "All Labor Has
Dignity") could be fruitful. Listening to the speech, providing study
aids/questions, and discussing how it links to OWS/OB work...</span></li><li><span style="">Let's make connections to the 3-Strikes law, or other local organizing that is happening in communities of color</span></li><li><span style=""><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial;font-size:small">
let's put out an open call for folks bring a piece (peace?) of MLK,
whether a quote, or speech excerpt, picture, film footage clip, story,
etc. Then we can do a show-and-tell style share-out and facilitate
community discussion around each piece.</div> </span></li></ul></div></div><div>Personally,
I think that anti-racism, anti-poverty, anti-militarism, and
systemic-restructuring initiatives are all places where Occupy Boston
has a lot of room for growth, and they all dovetail with the more
radical direction of King's thought and action towards the end of his
life. (See below for a glimpse of what I'm talking about. I pasted a
powerful and very radical excerpt from MLK's speech "Beyond Vietnam" of
1967...) </div> <div><br></div><div>The question for me, in that sense, is: <b>What does Occupy Boston, at this stage in its development, need to learn from Martin Luther King's campaigns, ideas, and legacy?</b></div><div><br>In
any case, I have reached out to professor Peniel Joseph, Mel King,
Kwame Somburu, and Sarah Ann Shaw. Only Kwame has confirmed. If there is
a speaker or community elder that you think should be included, feel
free to suggest (and/or contact!) that person!</div><div> <br><div>We have a
POC meeting this <b>Sunday at 3pm at E5(33 Harrison Ave),</b> and I believe
that we can do some organizing there for this opportunity.</div><div> </div><div>Until
then, please feel free to share more thoughts via email. I feel like
this is a huge opportunity, but I'll need your input to make the most of
it.</div> <div><br></div><div>Thanks,</div><div>Brian</div><div>===</div><div>Speech excerpt from </div><div><div style="font-family:'Times New Roman';text-align:-webkit-center;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);font-size:medium" align="center"> <font size="6">M</font><font size="5">artin </font><font size="6">L</font><font size="5">uther </font><font size="6">K</font><font size="5">ing, </font><font size="6">J</font><font size="5">r.</font></div><div style="font-family:'Times New Roman';text-align:-webkit-center;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);font-size:medium" align="center"> <b><i><a target="_blank" href="http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm">Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence</a></i></b></div><div style="font-family:'Times New Roman';text-align:-webkit-center;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);font-size:medium" align="center"> <font face="Arial" size="1">Delivered 4 April 1967, </font><em style="font-style:normal"><font face="Arial"><font size="1">Riverside Church, New York City</font></font></em></div></div><div><div style="font-family:Verdana;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)" align="left"> <br></div><div style="font-family:Verdana;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)" align="left">...As
we counsel young men concerning military service, we must clarify for
them our nation's role in Vietnam and challenge them with the
alternative of conscientious objection. I am pleased to say that this is
a path now chosen by more than seventy students at my own alma mater,
Morehouse College, and I recommend it to all who find the American
course in Vietnam a dishonorable and unjust one. Moreover, I would
encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial
exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors. These are the
times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our
lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own
folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that
best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.</div> <div style="font-family:Verdana;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)" align="left">Now
there is something seductively tempting about stopping there and
sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade
against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter that struggle, but I
wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing.<br> <br>The war
in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American
spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality...and if we ignore this
sobering reality, we will find ourselves organizing "clergy and laymen
concerned" committees for the next generation. They will be concerned
about Guatemala -- Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about
Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South
Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and
attending rallies without end, unless there is a significant and
profound change in American life and policy.</div> <div style="font-family:Verdana;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)" align="left">And so, such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.</div><div style="font-family:Verdana;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)" align="left">
In 1957, a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to
him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During
the past ten years, we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which
has now justified the presence of U.S. military advisors in Venezuela.
This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for
the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It
tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in
Cambodia and why American napalm and Green Beret forces have already
been active against rebels in Peru.</div> <div style="font-family:Verdana;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)" align="left">It
is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F.
Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make
peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has
taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by
refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the
immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are
to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must
undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin...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.</div> <div style="font-family:Verdana;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)" align="left">A
true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness
and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand,
we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that
will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole
Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be
constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's
highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It
comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.</div> <div style="font-family:Verdana;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)" align="left">A
true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring
contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look
across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing
huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the
profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries,
and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the
landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just." The Western
arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing
to learn from them is not just.</div> <div style="font-family:Verdana;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)" align="left">A
true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of
war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of
burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with
orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins
of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody
battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot
be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues
year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs
of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.</div> <div style="font-family:Verdana;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)" align="left">America,
the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the
way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death
wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit
of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing
to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands
until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood...</div> </div> </div><div><br><br><br><b>EDUCATION IS A WEAPON OF MASS CONSTRUCTION</b> <br>To schedule a class send to <a href="mailto:fsu@occupyboston.org">fsu@occupyboston.org</a>, write 'POST' and <date> in the subject line.<br>FSU classes WIKI:<br><a href="http://wiki.occupyboston.org/wiki/Solidarity/FSU">http://wiki.occupyboston.org/wiki/Solidarity/FSU</a><br>and whole Occupy Boston:<a href="http://www.occupyboston.org/calendar">http://www.occupyboston.org/calendar</a>/<br>Daily newspaper, list of classes and other notes RE: FSU can be found at Boston Occupier: <a href="http://bostonoccupier.com/free-school-u">http://bostonoccupier.com/free-school-u</a>/ <br>Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/OccupyBostonFSU">https://twitter.com/#!/OccupyBostonFSU</a> <br>Facebook: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/OccupyBostonFSU">https://www.facebook.com/groups/OccupyBostonFSU</a>/<br>Our recordings are listed on wiki and on:<br><a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/FSUOccupyBoston">http://www.youtube.com/user/FSUOccupyBoston</a><br></div></span></body></html>