“Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism and militarism. . .”       -Martin Luther King, Jr, from Beyond Vietnam speech, April 4th, 1967

I’m always personally touched when the King birthday holiday in January comes around. It was King’s assassination on April 4th, 1968 that moved me from concern about war and injustice to activism against them. On the day following it, I composed and posted a petition to Congress that was signed by about half of the students at the college I was attending, Grinnell College in Iowa, before I sent it off to Washington, D.C. I’ve been active ever since on a wide range of issues.

King was a political genius. He was someone who combined a passion for justice and an activist approach with a profound appreciation for what is sometimes called “mass politics.” On August 13, 1967, on NBC’s Meet the Press, he called for “direct action and powerful action programs” to challenge racial and economic injustice and the war in Vietnam. He was about concretely effecting change, and he knew in his bones that change of substance only happens when large numbers of grassroots people are organized into a powerful mass movement that can appeal to the conscience and the best within others while exerting political and/or economic power on those in positions of power.

Today, indeed, we truly need to “recapture the revolutionary spirit” to take on the forces of evil, personified most clearly by Trump, whose actions are responsible for massive, growing wealth inequality and poverty and who will literally burn up the planet if not stopped. This incoming President, who lost the popular vote by 3 million and whose latest approval rate, according to a Quinnipiac poll, is at a dismal 37%, can be and must be massively resisted with visible action.

Leonard Peltier is another person to draw strength from. Despite 41 years in federal prison for a crime the government has admitted in open court it cannot prove he committed, his spirit remains strong. Here is what he wrote on his 71st birthday:

“I was around 7 or 8 years old when I heard the old People talking about taking care of Mother Earth. But for me anyway, as with all young People, I did not really understand what they were trying to tell us. But I see today the traditionalists were correct and AIM People were right when we took it up as a rallying cry to the world. Still, when we spoke out against the destruction of Mother Earth, we were called a bunch of nuts. Well, today, it is called climate change, and there are now millions of us crying out against the destruction of our Mother Earth. Amazing, huh? Thankfully I have lived this long and can see we just might win this war. I know it’s not over – far from it – but the world is waking up and talking about it now. So, it can be won in our lifetime.”