On Monday, America observes a national holiday honoring the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who captured the imagination of our nation in a time of reckoning. As the appointed leader of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, he elevated the consciousness of society to the realities of violence in its many forms. Through Dr. King’s work and activism, he helped pull back the curtain on systemic violence and its destructive force against the whole of society. It ultimately cost him his own life by the very acts of violence he tirelessly worked to expose.

In his final speech, delivered on April 3, 1968, to a weary crowd at Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee, Dr. King spoke with optimism and humble clarity on the challenges humanity faced.

“I see God working in this period of the twentieth century in a way that men in some strange way are responding. Something is happening in our world … Men for years now have been talking about war and peace. But now no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it’s nonviolence or nonexistence. That is where we are today.” [1]

Violence is anything that subverts the freedom, identity, function, or existence of another. Violence is injustice. It is the outcome when love and equity are undermined. Language, beliefs, policies, systems, and practices are capable of exerting injustice against the rights of another being, preventing their full contribution to the world. When one is oppressed or another privileged, the community is weakened.

Dr. King understood the interconnectedness of this reality. Using imagery from the Biblical narratives and relying on Christian and secular philosophy, he helped the world see humanity as equal heirs to a created world. He believed the destiny of humanity relies on the pursuit of universal moral justice. Today, we are more attuned than ever before that we are physically, emotionally, and spiritually connected. In these perplexing times, we sense we’re on a trajectory that will either destroy or deliver us.

As we embark on the next quarter-century, there is a movement to return to a past of willful injustice where there are winners and losers, the strong and the weak, the privileged and the oppressed, the righteous and the wicked. We need leaders, creators, policymakers, educators, and those in positions of authority to uphold the values of nonviolence in every form as a way of life and spiritual practice. Words dictate action, and action will define our words. We will either sabotage and cease to exist, or love and live as one global community.

[1] Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, A Call to Conscience, Edited by Clayborne Carson and Kris Shepard (2001), 209.