Martin Luther King’s Lost Speech & The BDS Movement

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Earlier this month Democracy Now! aired the audio of a speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., found by the the director of the Pacifica Radio archives, Brian DeShazor, about apartheid in South Africa and the struggle for black civil rights in the United States. Dr. King gave the speech in December 1964 at London’s City Temple.

This article won’t look at the parts of the speech that focus on civil rights, segregation (legal and de jure), or the “abyss of exploitation,” as King called it, that blacks faced (and continue to face) in America. Rather, it will compare what King said about South Africa and how that compares to the fight for justice in occupied Palestine.

During his 1964 speech, he compared the “struggle for freedom and justice in the United States” by black Americans to those engaged in a “far more deadly struggle for freedom in South Africa.”

In part, he said:

Political Prisoner Oscar Lopez And The United States’ Subjugation Of Puerto Rico

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With Eric Holder on his way out the door as Attorney General, many Puerto Ricans are stepping up their calls for President Barack Obama to pardon 71-year-old political prisoner Oscar López Rivera, who has spent the last 33 years behind bars for seditious conspiracy. The holiday season is a common time for Presidents to use their power to grant clemency, but this was not to be in 2014 for the President who has granted the fewest pardons in modern times.

For Puerto Ricans, dismissal of their political demands is emblematic of their subjugation as colonial subjects.

In December, at a concert in San Juan, reggaeton singer René Pérez Joglar of the band Calle 13 brought López’s daughter Clarissa on stage to read a letter pleading for her father’s release. After winning the silver medal in judo in the Central American and Caribbean games in November, Augusto Miranda told the press: “I want to use this forum for all the people of Puerto Rico and the United States. It’s an abuse what they’ve done to Oscar López Rivera, political prisoner. It’s time to give him his freedom.”

Exploiting Human Tragedy: Manipulating Emotions & Obscuring Facts To Justify Brutal Occupation

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I think that the loss of any innocent life from violence is regrettable. The question of innocence in situations where one people is collectively attempting to brutally dominate can always be academically debated, but I have no intention to introduce such arguments here nor to try to explain away this violence or diminish, in any way, the human suffering that it causes. It’s not necessary.

Instead, I want to express my sense of injustice in how our society’s emotions can be manipulated so easily into outrage at the killing of any Israeli at the hands of Palestinians, while consistently ignoring many more such attacks on Palestinians by Israelis. I find this one sided reaction rather disturbing in its bias, hypocrisy and blatant racism. The government and media feed and promote this reaction. They create criminally manipulative propaganda through their presentation of the facts and their context.

Let me put things in perspective to illustrate my point:

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