Trump’s inauguration on MLK Day: It’s a sign of the times

This story was originally published by MLK50: Justice Through Journalism. Subscribe to their newsletter here.

What does it mean to honor the legacy of a man committed to eliminating poverty and establishing equality and justice while others celebrate the inauguration of a fascist? I don’t know about you, but it feels very American to me. Our country exists in a state of conflict where our stated ideals of justice and freedom fail to align with our political priorities.

The fear of another Donald Trump presidency has hung over us for the past four years like a heavy cloud. Those fears have become a reality, and it’s time to reflect and move forward. We won’t survive if we spend the next four years paralyzed by the fear of what Trump might do. Now is the time to study those who struggled before us, and the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is the perfect place to start. 

During organizing meetings in the Deep South, King and other leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference would center the space with hymnals. The hymnal that calls out to me the most now is “Woke Up This Morning.” The lyrics, “I’m walking and talking with my mind, stayed on freedom,” remind us that the resistance begins in our minds.

King spoke about this in his speech “Where Do We Go From Here” during the 1967 SCLC conference in Atlanta. “As long as the mind is enslaved, the body can never be free. Psychological freedom, a firm sense of self-esteem, is the most powerful weapon against the long night of physical slavery.” 

In that same speech, he shared his vision of ending poverty in the United States by calling for a guaranteed annual income. He courageously questioned the morality of American capitalism, where most of the country’s wealth rests in the hands of a select few while many others don’t have what they need to survive. When the incoming administration is gearing up for a war on poor folks, immigrants and the marginalized, we should turn towards leaders who are unafraid to speak the truth and demand more of our country.

Trump’s disdain for working people is clear when reviewing his positions on labor and worker rights. The contrast between him and King is stark. King asserted that all workers have the right to have safe working conditions, fair wages and respect. King’s labor efforts culminated in the Memphis sanitation worker strike — the movement that he died supporting. Meanwhile, Trump has said that striking workers should be fired, and he appointed many anti-labor judges to federal courts during his previous term in office. 

What else does King have to teach us?

So much of King’s legacy was built here in Memphis. In his final days, King came to our city to defend the very principles and ideals Trump is now working to undermine. But, King’s legacy is far more than a national holiday. His public speeches and private letters provide answers when we ask ourselves, “How will we survive this presidency?”

In “Beyond Vietnam” he says, “These are revolutionary times. All over the globe, men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born.” Then, he diagnoses the sickness at the heart of our current society: “… we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

King then tells us how to walk toward revolution: “A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: ‘This is not just.’” 

In his last speech, I’ve Been to the Mountaintop, given in Memphis the night before he was assassinated, he calls us to be our best selves, ruled by compassion and not fear. “Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness.” The only way we’ll survive this presidency and the harm it will cause is by building a beloved community where we look out for one another.