- Beitritt
- 12.04.2007
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- 6.494
Ich möcht' eigentlich keine eigene Rubrik haben, wär' für einen "Gelegentlichen" wohl auch gar nicht durchzuhalten. Dennoch: Wat mut, dat mut!
Am 28. August vor genau einem halben Jahrhundert kam es zum berühmten „Marsch auf Washington“ (genau “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom“, zu dem wir sicherlich mit Zitaten aus der Rede “ I have a dream“ von Martin Luther King jr. gar bald „bombardiert“ werden, einem Mann, der anders als Obama tat, was er sagte. Dabei darf nicht vergessen werden, was er ein Viertel Jahr zuvor aus dem Gefängnis schrieb.
Ich gebe hier Passagen aus dem “Letter from Birmingham Jail“ wieder, die heute so aktuell sind wie vor 50 Jahren:
«While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities "unwise and untimely."
[…]
We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal." It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country's antireligious laws.
[…]
I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season."
[…]
I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.
[…]
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.»
Zitiert nach: Liberation Curriculum, Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project, ©2004
www.liberationcurriculum.org