Only Revolutionary Love Can Save Us Now

Martin Luther King Jr’s 1967 speech condemning the Vietnam War offers a powerful moral compass as we face the challenges of our time

Michelle Alexander / The Nation

This moment feels different. Something new is in the air. Of course, everything is always changing. Impermanence is the way of life. Philosophers, theologians, and poets have reminded us for centuries that the only constant is change. As the late, great Nina Simone, once put it,

The young become the old
and mysteries do unfold
for that’s the way of time
no one, and nothing stays unchanged

Still, I think I am not alone in sensing that this year feels different. Something new is in the air.

Some would say it is the stench of death. We can smell it now, almost taste it. Tens of thousands of people have been killed in Gaza in just a few months with our bombs—mass murder funded by our government, aided and abetted by our military, paid for by our tax dollars. We have been told by our government that we are not witnessing genocide.

And yet I, like millions of people around the world, have watched. I have watched the hearings at the International Court of Justice in the Hague as charges have been brought by South Africa charging Israel with genocide—hearings that mainstream news outlets refused to air.

But that is not all that I have watched. For more than 150 days, I have watched videos that have traveled around the globe. I have watched as mothers have pulled body parts of their dead children out of rubble, then gathered the pieces of their children—hands, arms, legs—into bags, and carried the remains of their children down the street in agony, with grieving relatives wailing and trailing behind them. I have watched as fathers have sprinted to buildings that have just been bombed, arriving in time to learn that their entire family is dead. I have watched as children in hospitals have been told that, no, your mother did not survive, and neither did your father, or your sister, or your uncle; one nurse, with tears in her eyes, tried to reassure a young boy that he isn’t actually alone in the world, telling him, “I am here, little one, I am here for you,” even though all his family is gone – every last relative – lost in the rubble. I have watched as children have had their limbs amputated – sawed off – without anaesthesia because the hospitals have been destroyed by bombs and there is no medicine, including pain medication, to be found. I have watched as people facing starvation have been shot at by soldiers as they approach vehicles carrying aid.

I have watched and I have watched. All of this is occurring on our watch.

Something different is in the air. But it is not just the mass killing in Gaza, including more than 12,500 children, and the destruction of schools, churches, mosques, hospitals, universities, museums, and basic infrastructure. It is not just the memories of the killings that occurred on October 7, memories of brutality which many continue to carry along with grief and unshakable fear. More than a thousand Jews were killed on that day, leading to panic and unspeakable pain….

https://scheerpost.com/2024/03/12/only-revolutionary-love-can-save-us-now

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