Public Reading of Dr. King’s “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence”

The California PPC is mobilizing communities throughout the state to participate in the planning, coordination, mobilization, and implementation of public readings (in-person and virtual) of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s historic speech “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.”

The April 4 day of public participatory readings will be the second milestone event in the California Poor People’s Campaign January–June Mobilization building toward the June 18 Mass Poor People’s and Low Wage Workers Assembly and Moral March on Washington D.C.–and to the Polls.

We have ambitious plans. By 6:01 pm ET on April 4, there will have been at least 54 public readings of “Beyond Vietnam” in at least 3 languages: American Sign Language, Spanish and English. The 54 public readings are for each year since Dr. King’s assassination; 6:01 pm is when the ER doctor pronounced him dead.

Why This Speech? “Beyond Vietnam” was delivered on April 4, 1967, exactly one year before his assassination. Dr. King declared: “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” He went on to name the United States government as the greatest purveyor of violence in the world and preached that nonviolent direct action is our greatest hope and the best tool to bring about change. In this powerful speech. Dr. King provides both a diagnosis and a cure that remains fully relevant today.

“I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values…. we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. 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.”

The PPC has picked up Dr. King’s unfinished work, weaving the interlocking injustices—systemic racism, systemic poverty, environmental devastation, militarism, and the war economy and a distorted moral narrative of Christian nationalism—into one “moral fusion” campaign. Join us in bringing Dr. King’s full vision alive again as we build toward the May 16 Mobilization Tour stop in L.A. and the June 18 Mass Assembly.

For more information, please contact the Poor People’s Campaign- Central Coast Region, PPC.CentralCoast@gmail.com