The Triple Evils of POVERTY, RACISM and MILITARISM are forms of violence that exist in a vicious cycle. They are interrelated, all-inclusive, and stand as barriers to our living in the Beloved Community. ...
Poverty – unemployment, homelessness, hunger, malnutrition, illiteracy, infant mortality, slums…
“There is nothing new about poverty. What
is new, however, is that we now have the resources to get rid of it.
The time has come for an all-out world war against poverty … The well
off and the secure have too often become indifferent and oblivious to
the poverty and deprivation in their midst. Ultimately a great nation is
a compassionate nation. No individual or nation can be great if it does
not have a concern for ‘the least of these.”
Racism – prejudice, apartheid, ethnic conflict, anti-Semitism, sexism, colonialism, homophobia, ageism, discrimination against disabled groups, stereotypes…
“Racism is a philosophy based on a
contempt for life. It is the arrogant assertion that one race is the
center of value and object of devotion, before which other races must
kneel in submission. It is the absurd dogma that one race is responsible
for all the progress of history and alone can assure the progress of
the future. Racism is total estrangement. It separates not only bodies,
but minds and spirits. Inevitably it descends to inflicting spiritual
and physical homicide upon the out-group.”
Militarism – war, imperialism, domestic violence, rape, terrorism, human trafficking, media violence, drugs, child abuse, violent crime…
“A true revolution of values will lay
hands on the world order and say of war- ‘This way of settling
differences is not just.’ This way 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 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.”
Source: “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?” by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; Boston: Beacon Press, 1967.
(emphasis mine)
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