Insurrection and Martin Luther King< Jr. Day

Country Parson

Martin Luther King Jr. Day is a national holiday that will be observed on January 19. Dr. King was assassinated fifty-eight years ago while engaged in the work of lifting up the lives of low-income sanitation workers in Memphis. That work was not incidental to his vocation; it was a natural extension of his lifelong commitment to the fulfillment of the American dream for all people, regardless of race or economic condition.

There will be news coverage of his life and legacy, and many of us will give it a brief glance or listen. For most, it will not receive much more attention than that.

This year, however—more than at any time in several decades—Martin Luther King Jr. Day ought to be a moment of deep national reflection on what it means to be a country whose government is of the people, by the people, and for the people, especially for those who have been marginalized by exclusion and institutionalized oppression. I do not know whether it will be.

Nineteen sixty-eight was a long time ago. For many Americans it is history barely remembered; for some it is unknown; and for others it is a chapter best left closed, because it presses too uncomfortably against the conditions of our present moment.

Today, the president has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act against the people of Minnesota in order to force an end to public demonstrations protesting the ICE-armed occupation of their cities. That threat bears an eerie resemblance to the assault on civil-rights marchers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965, when Alabama governor George Wallace authorized state and local law-enforcement agencies to attack peaceful demonstrators—an event that came to be known as Bloody Sunday.

Then, as now, the civil-rights movement was a movement of, by, and for the people—people who had endured centuries of abuse, humiliation, and exclusion. Yet the state labeled them “insurrectionists,” accusing them of threatening public order and the legitimacy of law itself. That is precisely what President Trump has now accused the citizens of Minnesota of doing.

But in 1965, as today, the real insurrection was not carried out by ordinary citizens. In Alabama, it was a state-sponsored insurrection against the legitimacy and promise of American constitutional democracy. Today, the insurrectionists are armed, deputized gangs—operating under the color of law—who deploy military equipment and violent force against the foundations of American society and its long-standing commitment to justice for all in a free and democratic nation.

If Dr. King were alive today, I suspect he would be leading demonstrations in the Twin Cities—though perhaps in a different register. There would likely be more silence: more sitting, kneeling, and refusal to move. There would be a deliberate effort to make unmistakably clear that those dressed in military combat gear were the ones acting with violent intent.

Dr. King, of course, can be present now only in memory. The grassroots movement in Minnesota has developed its own methods—louder, more energetic, but still largely nonviolent—and they deserve to be understood on their own terms.

I do not want another Bloody Sunday. No truly patriotic American does. I hope it does not require such violence before the nation as a whole rises to restore the legitimacy of its federal government and to resume the long, unfinished work of moving toward an American dream that belongs to all our people, without discrimination.