MLK Day

Gretchen Clearwater celebrated the birthday of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on Monday, January 16th. She participated in a rally and march entitled, "What Would Martin Do?"

Gretchen also gave a speech at the end of the march at the Monroe County Courthouse. The speech was well-received, despite a malfunctioning bullhorn. I've posted excerpts of it below.

Ms. Clearwater’s remarks drew attention to Dr. King’s anti-war activities in the last years of his life, especially his speech of April 4, 1967, entitled “Beyond Vietnam.” Opposition to the Iraq War is one of the pillars of the Clearwater For Congress campaign. Clearwater spoke about how “eerily relevant” King’s words are today and how much this “great leader of this nation” influenced her as a child.

Just as King saw that the war in Vietnam “[drew] men and skills and money like some demonic, destructive suction tube,” so today Clearwater decried the “absurdity of sending the Louisiana National Guard to Iraq while not mending the dikes at home.”

Just as King said that he spoke then as “a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken,” so Clearwater objected to a “ruling elite [that] calls itself moral” while it “condones torture and cuts funding for social programs at home.”

Gretchen Clearwater stated that she believes Dr. King would have spoken out today in support of “the rights of all minorities” and against “the increasing gap between the rich and the poor.”

She went on to say, “I, like Dr. King, cannot be silent, and will not be silenced. We must bring this unjust war in Iraq to an end.” “Support our troops—bring them home!” Clearwater urged.

Clearwater closed her speech with a long quotation from Dr. King which rings as true today as it did 39 years ago: “And if we will only make the right choice, we will be able to transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of peace. If we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. If we will but make the right choice, we will be able to speed up the day, all over America and all over the world, when justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”