Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (King Legacy)

Note – 1 I think it’s important to add a couple of notes. Regarding doctor King’s comments particularly how he in his writings tends to anesthetize the events or the circumstances of the African American peoples. For example in this particular statement that he makes he used the term “something within” that convinced the African American that he can achieve his freedom or that he should achieve his freedom. This “something within” statement is a great example of how he reduce the horrors, the calamity the destruction of African American family and upon his person which is in my estimation, it’s more of a reflection that is more in tune to the sensitivity of those who are the murderers and rapists. This book has to be studied, but not just for the content, but it should be studied regarding the perceptions of how doctor king relays the issues that are at hand. He presents these issues in a way that make it to be too soft or better said, it’s the impact is minimalized. Additionally, some of his statements are more idealistic. Martin looks upon the white man’s supposed progress and he automatically imply it as being some type of efforts for the positive benefit of all of humankind. Now of course, I am over 40 years beyond his death, so I have to take into consideration that I’m looking back and utilizing hindsight which I can easily criticize and find his errors. So with that in mind, I still know that the idealistic views that Dr. King has and it is reflected within his writings. I have to compare it to other men and women that also came from his time period. I note that in their writings, they were more direct, critical and realistic regarding the white man himself versus the conditions that Dr. King is utilizing to present this positive outlook. My 2nd note here regarding Martin’s position dealing with this slogan Black Power. Martin is making some very great points, but what I clearly see, Martin was really not a carrier with an understanding that the black power slogan is more of a transitional slogan that should be considered to be the foundation for knowledge about black independence. MARTIN’s comments are dealing with the integration needs that can be clearly seen in a body of people who have been kidnapped, stolen from their lands and where their language has been stripped from them and trapped in a despotic nation. Dr. King preference is for the slogan -Freedom Now – which is the is integrationist slogan. But this reality about the need for black independence where black people themselves should be seen and noted that they are a separate people, they are not to be considered as an integrated body of people, but a people that occupies the lands of these so-called United States and that other people should be considered to have a need to integrate with us within a civil society. The African American people are to be considered to be a black independent state!

Still relevant today. For those in politics, journalism, public service, high school, college or advanced degree coursework, a must read.

This book -- and by extension, its author -- SO FAR AHEAD OF ITS TIME. I was inspired to read it after visiting the Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta, GA. There, I learned that Dr. King was so much more than the flat, watered-down version presented in my high school history books. He was a real man with profound thoughts, agonizing feelings, and boundless hope. He was almost certainly a genius as well as a humanitarian, gifted speaker and eloquent writer. I learned so much from this book. Dr. King almost effortlessly makes an airtight case for civil rights, knocking down excuse after persistent excuse about why we should not be involved and just let things "happen." He says (I'm paraphrasing) that no one's rights are GIVEN to them, they must DEMAND their rights. And if history tells us anything, that is 100% true -- not just for black people, but for women, LGBT people, disabled people and so on. Something else I loved was his uncompromising position on nonviolent resistance. I grow increasingly concerned every time I hear people say that rioting is an acceptable form of protest, when it results in injury, death, and the destruction of people's livelihood. I long ago committed myself to nonviolence, but I have felt increasing pressure from my fellow activists to accept rioting as a legitimate form of protest. Reading Dr. King's work was a great assurance that there are nonviolent ways to achieve racial reconciliation. I lost track of how many times I highlighted in this book. The only thing I have an issue with is how he proposes to deal with education. I taught in a mostly-black school so I absolutely understand his underlying point that black kids too often do not receive a quality education. However, he puts the blame on teachers, saying that they don't know how to teach and that a child's home environment shouldn't matter. I beg to differ that this is the case. I could cite studies to prove my point, but I would rather quote my actual students complaining of hunger, lack of sleep, feeling like they are not safe at home, etc. as reasons why they have trouble in school. If we are going to solve the problem of unequal education, we must also solve the problem of poverty. There is simply no other way around it. Children can't concentrate when they are hungry, homeless, or getting beat up at home. We have got to make the "war on poverty" a priority if we want to see lasting changes. At any rate, I highly recommend this book, especially to my white friends!

I recommend that anyone, who still believes that the late, great Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was only a "dreamer" and an "integrationist", and not a creative, strategic thinker, and genuine radical and revolutionary, in the image and spirit of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, Marcus Garvey, and others, purchase, from Amazon.com, and then read, re-read, and think deeply about, "Where Do We Go From Here: Community or Chaos". Since his assassination on April 4, 1968, most Americans, Black and White, have fond memories of Dr. King's famous "I Have A Dream" speech, which was the highlight of the August, 1963, March on Washington and rally at the Lincoln Memorial. While no one can deny the greatness of that historic speech, what most people don't know is that, a few years later, Dr. King repudiated his "I Have A Speech Dream" speech as hopelessly naive because, at that time, he did not realize that America's "individualism, militarism, and racism" was tantamount to a "nightmare", deeply embedded in the fabric of American culture, politics, economic and social policy. After the March on Washington, and the "I Have A Dream" speech, King and the Civil Rights movement, aided and abetted by the commitment, political courage and leadership of President, Lyndon Baines Johnson, scored powerful victories with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965. But, almost concurrent with these historic legislative victories, urban ghettos exploded in riots, in 1964 and 1965, demonstrating to King, and the other leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, that demonstrations, marches, majestic, soaring rhetoric, and even federal legislation, was not going to be enough to change, on a fundamental basis, the predominant and prevailinig cultural, economic, political and social values and priorities in America. A Southern backlash, against the Civil Right Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, urban riots in Northern cities, in spite of two major civil rights bills, the failure of King to integrate the suburbs, in and around Chicago, and the escalation of the Vietnam War, compelled him to take three months, during the latter part of 1966, and the first part of 1967, to write "Where Do We Go From Here: Community or Chaos". King's goal was to outline and communicate the 2nd and most important phase of what he called the Movement. In this, his last and most powerful book, King set out the bold and radical changes, in American thought and action, that all Americans, Black and White, in and out of the civil rights movement, needed to take, in business, culture, economics, education, politics, and religion, to achieve what he called "a revolutionary re-ordering of American values and priorites. Believe it or not, in this book, Dr. King deals with business, especially the power of boycotts, economics, education, jobs and job training, and the need for thoughtul and strategic engagement in politics, especially by Blacks, in an incredible amount of surprisingly bold and radical detail. One of the major things Dr. King committed to do in this book was the momentous decision that probably led to his cowardly assassination, at the Lorraine Motel, in Memphis, Tennessee: the decision to come out, aggressively and boldy, against President Lyndon B. Johnson, the United States government, and the expensive and murderdous war in Vietnam. But, at this point in Dr. King's career as a Minister of the Gospel, Civil Rights Leader, and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, as he said on the last day on this Earth, he had "been to the Mountaintop, and had seen the Promised Land". He was not afraid to, as he always put it, "Bear the Cross", so that the Americans, who live each day, working to achieve his vision of "the Beloved Community", could, one day, "wear the crown". After reading this book, it's up to each of us to to take a long, hard look at what we have and have not done in our own communities, and decide whether, based on the bold, radical, and transformative ideas propounded by Dr. King in "Where Do We Go From Here: Community or Chaos", has led to success, which is community, or failure, which is chaos. Even though most of us, especially our government and politicians, have not heeded Dr. King's warnings about the cost of not transforming the values and priorities of America, which, according to King, is "spiritual death", if we read and follow his advice, it's still not too late!!!

This is an amazing and important book, out of print for much too long. It is an impassioned and urgent call to heal. Because it was written in the 1960's it is really two books. Part of the book is of important and historical interest. This involves Dr. King's take on what was going on in the country. But the other part of the book is Dr. King's rallying cry of "Where do we go from here?" There are so many thoughts I could lift from the book to share. But given the space, here are just a few: "Together we must learn to live as brothers or together we will be forced to perish as fools." Dr. King goes on to add, "The question now is, do we have the morality and courage required to live together as brothers and not be afraid?" Dr. King was clearly seeing our drift towards chaos, and just as clearly was warning us that we must move towards community or perish. This is an even more urgent book today as it was in the 1960's. It is a book not only to read but refer back to, over an over. My sermon yesterday was on our propensity to divide ourselves into "us" and "them." Dr. King was a great believer in "us" - and far more eloquent than I can ever hope to be on the subject. Dr. King's point was that if we cannot find our common humanity, we must and will perish. In the end, there is no "them." There is only "us."

In 2015, in the wake of the decisions made by grand juries in Ferguson, Missouri and New York City, America is still asking the same question as the title of the book,Where do We Go From Here; Chaos or Community. Moreover, the violence in Ferguson achieved the same purpose as the 1965 Watts riots: It made Americans pay attention. Also, in the first part of the book Martin Luther King, Jr. seems to be describing a segment of American society that has not changed that much since 1967: the poor. Also, King explains his philosophy of nonviolence and successfully describes how it can be an effective strategy to change a racist society. In effect, nonviolence weakened the institutions established by segregation by exposing their moral contradictions. Yet, another passion drove King: integration. This was the most surprising part of the book. From what I read he believed in integration to a fault, arguing that African Americans should completely assimilate into white society. Many African Americans have followed this path, which has decimated African American communities. Near the end of the book King presents his solution for addressing poverty and education, which is truly idealistic. For example, he suggests the government should create a fund to help fight poverty and education. However, King underestimated America’s perpetual flaw: its infatuation with capitalism, a system where 99% of the wealth is concentrated in less than 1% of population of America. Morally, Dr. King is right, but we're talking about America, where poverty has been become a criminal offense—a felony. For too many African Americans, the America that King describes in his book still exists today. As a result, the African American community in twenty-first century America vacillates between chaos and community, much like in Charles Dickens’s novel, A Tale of Two Cities: African Americans are living in both the best and the worst of times; we have an African American President and African American males are being slaughtered in the streets of America.

A universal basic median income can easily be achieved through a proportional tax on the movement of all money every time it moves. Alexander Hamilton advocated this in Federalist Paper 12, paragraph 3. Adam Smith advocated it in his book The Wealth of Nations. This is what it will take to end poverty both here and worldwide.

Dr. King's Where Do We Go From Here challenges us to see beyond surface achievements. The book is especially relevant in today's social landscape, where debates around economic inequality and racial justice continue. The content bridges the complexities of morality and economics in the civil rights movement.

All my life I have been falsely taught to believe that Martin Luther king Jrs philosophy was all about turn the other cheek. This misconception had spurred me to admire Malcolm X a bit more. However after reading Martin's book in his own words, he was indeed a clever revolutionary leader who fully understood the dynamics of his people's situation and how to radically change the status quo without shedding blood. Malcolm X philosophy made sense, but in a society that you are vastly outnumbered, military confrontation would have been suicidal.

Esse foi o terceiro livro de King que li, como os anteriores, é um livro que deveria ser de leitura obrigatória. Como infelizmente acontece, pessoas como King que podem fazer a diferença no mundo são eliminadas para que tudo fique como está, um grande caos.

Ce n'est pas parce qu'un livre a été écrit il y a plusieurs décennies qu'il est dépassé. Martin Luther King reste très actuel dans tout ce qu'il a écrit. Et on trouverait sans problème dans cet ouvrage des citations qu'on pourrait appliquer à nos sociétés du XXIè s. A lire et à relire!

You can't go wrong with a king book

This book explains the wider context of MLK's non-violence movement and suggests ways that all of us, black and white, should go forward. But he wrote it in 1967 and I don't see that we are that much nearer. Certainly, the growth of nationalism, fear of immigrants and characters such as Donald Trump and Boris Johnson and Matteo Salvini are sending us down the wrong path. As MLK says: "Power and morality must go together, implementing, fulfilling and ennobling each other..." And he explains why hate and fear make such a bad basis for politics: "Hate is just as injurious to the hater as it is to the hated. Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Many of our inner conflicts are rooted in hate." And he concludes: "Hate is too great a burger to bear." It's a marvellous book, not long, easy to read. If we don't follow it in the next 50 years, I really wonder where we will end up — in a time like the 1930s or 1940s, perhaps.