April 4, 2016, marks the forty-eighth anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., a profound tragedy for our nation and the world.
On this day we honor the living spirit of Dr. King’s vision, the power of his final speech in Memphis, and the significance and relevance of his work in our times. His magnetizing message of justice, solidarity, peace, and interconnectedness is embodied in countless movements and limitless leaders around the planet.
We affirm the inevitable victory of justice, compassion, community, and love, in spite of those systems that seek to silence prophetic voices and sidetrack our movements for social and ecological transformation.
We remember the interrelated vision of Dr. King’s last years and months, as he spoke to the connections between racism, war, and poverty, emphasized the “interrelated structure of all reality,” and called for us to “planetize the movement.”
The full-length video above is from our event in Oakland, California, in 2013, on the forty-fifth anniversary of King’s final speech, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop.”
It features interviews with leading visionaries Belvie Rooks, Rev. Osagyefo Sekou, Paul Hawken, and Rev. Deborah L. Johnson, and music by the incredible Jennifer Johns.
In the first part of the video, Drew Dellinger presents six aspects of Dr. King’s “Mountaintop Vision,” as well as ecological and cosmological dimensions of King’s thought that have been previously overlooked. Reclaiming the fullness of King’s radical, interconnected vision can help inspire our current work to build unified, effective movements for racial justice, climate justice, gender justice, LGBTQ rights, and all the other aspects of creating a viable, thriving future.
