You remember your Dr. King
We remember ours
You believe that in these times
Dr. King would like diversity and inclusion
You cite his “content of their character”
“rather than the color of their skin”
Diversity is alive and well at Boeing
Everybody’s welcome to work there
On bombers and bunker busters
If you’ve got the skills
You can make the big bucks
At the company that thrives on war
That makes generous contributions
To the D.C. Dr. King memorial
But others around the world and in the U.S.
Remember a Dr. King you don’t know
Like survivors of the U.S. assault on Vietnam
The people Dr. King spoke out for in 1967-1968
“I knew that I could never again raise my voice
against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos
without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence
in the world today — my own government”
“If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned
part of the autopsy must read: Vietnam”
“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.”
Your Dr. King would applaud
The Boeing Company
Our Dr. King spoke out against
The U.S. destruction of Vietnamese human beings
And would have spoken out against
The U.S. destruction of Iraqi human beings
And would be disturbing the peace
Because of U.S. drone attacks on Afghan human beings
Your Dr. King would pat you on the back
Our Dr. King reminds us of “the fierce urgency of now”
Your Dr. King would not raise his voice
Our Dr. King would be standing amidst the rubble of Gaza with Palestinian human beings
Your Dr. King would have nothing to say
About the ever-escalating war budget
Our Dr. King would have been on the boats bound for Gaza
With Alice Walker, Hedy Epstein and friends
“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense
than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
This is a familiar story
Honor the prophets when they are safely and long dead
Build them memorials
Praise them in national liturgies
While counting all those fantastic profits
From daily dealing in the machinery of death, dismemberment, and disintegration
Your Dr. King
At home in the military-industrial-corporate complex
Our Dr. King
At home with the sanitation workers, orphaned Vietnamese children, and Iraqi refugees
Your building on
Dr. King’s “I have a dream” speech
Our building on
Dr. King’s words “Our only hope today lies in our ability
To recapture the revolutionary spirit
and go out into a sometimes hostile world
declaring eternal hostility
to poverty, racism, and militarism.”
Passages in italics from Dr. Martin Luther King’s speech, “Beyond Vietnam — A Time to Break Silence” (4.4.1967)
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