Loving Loudly in Honor of Dr King

Dr. King taught me that choosing love means using my voice.

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Once a year, we honor the birth of Civil Rights Icon Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Thankfully, it’s a national holiday, so many of us won’t have work. During this “collective day off,” we are encouraged to “reflect on King's Legacy” and his fight for “Black kids to play with white kids.” In New York, it’s cold and wet, so I will likely spend my day indoors, jumping from one screen to another, looking for a quick dopamine hit. In the quiet moments between “Sponsored content” and the 15 second ads, I’m sure my mind will wander, as always, and because of the man we celebrate on this day, my mind will eventually land on Dr. King. I sometimes wonder who he would be if he were alive today. Would he still hold firm to the principles we knew him for, or like some leaders will his actions run inconsistent with the things he once said? 

I like to believe for no other reason than my own desire, that Doctor King would still be the man who was willing to stand up to white supremacy and the mass hoarding of wealth. He wouldn’t be perfect, because no one is, but I think he would be a leading voice in pushing against our country’s current obsession with money over people.

Unfortunately, Dr. King is dead, he has been for quite some time. I can assume he would be pushing for a ceasefire and criticizing the Biden Administration for not doing enough for everyday people, but the reality is he’s gone. All I have are the words he said and what they mean to me. Today they mean a lot, but it wasn’t always that way. I used to gravitate towards the words of Malcolm X. Brother Malcolm represents all of the anger I feel at what this world is, how it views me, how it treats Black, Brown and poor people, and its refusal to change. But under all of that rage is a light that I have been trying to shine brighter: the love I have for humanity and my hope that we can be better. That light, which I try to cultivate so it might grow, has brightened my view of Dr. King, and guides me today. That light is what I believe Dr. King would call Love.

But what did Dr. King mean when he talked about “love?” to King, Love was action. If you ask those in power, they may describe a passive activity that looks away softly as injustice occurs. Love can be action, but only in the right circumstances, they enjoy citing King’s, “I had a dream” speech to drive that point home. We have seen this position intensify, most recently on the 8th of January. On that day, supporters for a ceasefire in Gaza interrupted President Biden during a speech at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston South Carolina. This church was the site of the 2015 murders of nine people by white supremacist, Dylann Roof. The protestors were eventually shouted down by Biden supporters who chanted “Four More Years.”

The news has been mostly critical of this interruption of Biden’s address. The pro Palestine supporters “picked the wrong venue” to voice their issues. America is a loving place, but the suffering of people should only be spoken about in specific scenarios. Somehow, I don’t believe King would have agreed with that conclusion, he definitely wouldn’t have called it love.

Dr. King's idea of love was more than a talking point perpetuated by politicians in the hopes of quelling the rage of their electorate. His love would have made him incapable of remaining silent while people died of starvation, and terror. His love was active, compassionate, and connected to power. His type of love was not silent during state sanctioned violence, or dishonest about the realities.

It might be called ‘Radical,’ or even extreme today, but it was a love grounded in reality. In his final book “Where do we go from here: Chaos or Community '' King says that “Love without power is sentimental and anemic.” Where most of us fall short is in our interpretation of Power. Power holds many forms, but for much of the world, our clearest examples of power in action have been through the military and violence. Both are tools that can help to amplify a certain type of power but are unsustainable. 

True Love, and what I believe was King's idea of love, is one that is honest and doesn’t bend to what society believes to be the facts in the moment. True love is the ability to look at a stranger and see yourself; it’s to understand that while we may have different experiences and our stories aren't the same, we are still connected and need each other. It’s within that love you will find the most radical component. One of King's greatest strengths was the ability to look at people who did him and his communities harm, and still acknowledge their humanity.

Loving Radically is the ability to understand that someone may have hurt you or caused harm to someone you care for, and while you want them to be held accountable, you understand that they must be hurting too. When we lose the ability to see each other, we create the space for unspeakable things to happen.  Radical love is the ability to see clearly, no matter how cloudy the skies, that we are all children figuring things out as we go, and fighting through generational curses. Radical love is knowing that every person, no matter what has happened in their life, or what they have done, has the ability to grow—it’s the willingness and desire to give them the space needed to do so. 

I don’t know who Dr. King was as a person. I have to rely on written speeches, and historical accounts. But as someone trying to lean towards his better angels, I understand intimately how difficult something like this can be. To love, and to love radically means to speak truth to power, and speak up against injustice. The world is a challenging, confusing, wonderful, and beautiful place to live in, because of these complications It can be hard to know what the right thing to do is. but in all of that chaos, we can still always choose love. I feel clear in my heart that hatred gives nothing back, instead it takes everything away. Like King, I choose love, I hope you will too.