Only Revolutionary Love Can Save Us Now

This moment feels different. Something new is in the air.   

Of course, everything is always changing. Impermanence is the way of life. Philosophers, theologians, and poets have reminded us for centuries that the only constant is change. As the late, great Nina Simone, once put it,

The young become the old
and mysteries do unfold
for that’s the way of time
no one, and nothing stays unchanged

Still, I think I am not alone in sensing that this year feels different. Something new is in the air.

Some would say it is the stench of death. We can smell it now, almost taste it. Tens of thousands of people have been killed in Gaza in just a few months with our bombs—mass murder funded by our government, aided and abetted by our military, paid for by our tax dollars.  We have been told by our government that we are not witnessing genocide.

And yet I, like millions of people around the world, have watched. I have watched the hearings at the International Court of Justice in the Hague as charges have been brought by South Africa charging Israel with genocide—hearings that mainstream news outlets refused to air.  

But that is not all that I have watched. For more than 150 days, I have watched videos that have traveled around the globe. I have watched as mothers have pulled body parts of their dead children out of rubble, then gathered the pieces of their children—hands, arms, legs—into bags, and carried the remains of their children down the street in agony, with grieving relatives wailing and trailing behind them. I have watched as fathers have sprinted to buildings that have just been bombed, arriving in time to learn that their entire family is dead. I have watched as children in hospitals have been told that, no, your mother did not survive, and neither did your father, or your sister, or your uncle; one nurse, with tears in her eyes, tried to reassure a young boy that he isn’t actually alone in the world, telling him, “I am here, little one, I am here for you,” even though all his family is gone—every last relative—lost in the rubble. I have watched as children have had their limbs amputated—sawed off—without anesthesia because the hospitals have been destroyed by bombs and there is no medicine, including pain medication, to be found. I have watched as people facing starvation have been shot at by soldiers as they approach vehicles carrying aid.

I have watched and I have watched. All of this is occurring on our watch. 

Something different is in the air. But it is not just the mass killing in Gaza, including more than 12,500 children, and the destruction of schools, churches, mosques, hospitals, universities, museums, and basic infrastructure. It is not just the memories of the killings that occurred on October 7, memories of brutality which many continue to carry along with grief and unshakable fear. More than a thousand Jews were killed on that day, leading to panic and unspeakable pain.

As if all of that were not enough, there is another source of anxiety, fear, and dread that is hanging in the air. This is an election year. And some are saying that if things do not go well, it could be the last election our nation ever has. Democracy hangs in the balance. Donald Trump has said that, if he is elected, he will be a dictator only on the first day of his second term. After that, he says, we can trust that he’ll behave himself.  

I do not trust Donald Trump.

But is not just the brutal war or the threats to our fledgling democracy or attacks on voting rights or attacks on the very ideas of diversity and inclusion that has many of us feeling anxious in a different kind of way right now; 2023 was the hottest year on record—by a lot. We reached the highest global temperature of all the years since scientists began tracking that data in 1850. Last year’s record beat the next warmest year, 2016, by a record-setting margin. Climate change is accelerating faster than nearly anyone predicted. It is no longer our future; it is our present. And yet, the five biggest oil companies last year raked in record profits, nearly $200 billion in profits—more than the economic output of most countries. 

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We wonder why so many young people today are depressed, anxious, and struggling with their mental health. Perhaps it is social media. The attention economy, also driven by a lust for profits, has kept us glued and addicted to our phones—isolated and lonely—endlessly scrolling and comparing ourselves to others, caught in outrage loops and doom spirals.

And yet, as author Johann Hari has pointed out, it is perfectly normal for any species to become anxious and depressed when their habitat is being destroyed. Even if social media did not exist, why would we expect young people to be anything other than anxious and depressed when they know that, with rapidly accelerating climate change, the conditions for their very survival are being destroyed?

Perhaps technology will save us, some say. The price of green energy is falling, and new forms of green technology are being created every day. 

Yet, what is also new is the awareness that AI just might destroy humanity. I was at a conference recently where two experts on AI, people who themselves have helped to build and create technologies that have transformed our world, warned that if we do not engage in unprecedented action right now to reign it in, we will unleash a power beyond our control. Many now believe that AI poses a greater threat to our democracy and to our world than the next election— It may even be a greater threat than world war, and a more immediate threat than climate change. 

Some of you may be wondering what any of this has to do with mass incarceration or police violence—the issues and causes that I have held most dear for much of my life. My answer is that what I’ve just described has everything to do with mass incarceration. I have been talking about the existential crises we face in our nation and our world because we have persisted in treating people—and all creation—as exploitable and disposable, unworthy of our care and concern. We persist in believing that we can solve problems, do justice, or achieve peace and security by locking people up, throwing away the key, destroying their lives and families, getting rid of them, declaring wars on them—wars on drugs, wars on crime, and wars on Gaza. Wars are frequently declared on problems, but they are always waged on people.   

Of all the incredible speeches that Martin Luther King, Jr. gave in his life, I think the one that speaks most directly to the times that we are living in now, and that models what is required of us as we face multiple existential threats to our democracy and our world, is the speech that King gave when he publicly condemned the Vietnam War—and was immediately cancelled.

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That speech has become a touchpoint for me in recent years. Whenever I need a moral compass or my courage begins to falter, I return to the words King spoke on April 4, 1967, one year before his assassination, at the Riverside Church in Manhattan.

King said, “I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice.” He explained that “a time comes when silence is betrayal” and that time had come in relation to Vietnam.

It is difficult to overstate the political risk that King was taking when he stepped to the podium at Riverside Church. Our nation had been at war with Vietnam for two years, more than 400,000 American service members were deployed, and roughly 10,000 American troops had been killed. The war had enthusiastic bipartisan support within the political establishment, and those who dared to criticize the war were often labeled Communists and subjected to vicious forms of retaliation and backlash. Many of King’s friends and allies warned him that speaking the whole truth about the war would jeopardize the fragile gains of the civil rights movement. Little could be gained, they said, by speaking up for people halfway around the world and much could be lost. “Why are you joining the voices of dissent? Aren’t you hurting the cause of your people?” they asked.

King acknowledged the source of their concerns but said that their questions revealed that they did not really know him, his commitment, or his calling. Indeed, as far he was concerned, “they do not know the world in which they live.” King acknowledged that it is not easy for people to speak out against their own government, especially during wartime, and that the situation in Vietnam was complex. But he felt morally obligated to speak for the suffering and helpless children of Vietnam. He said:

This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation’s self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation and for those it calls “enemy,” for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.

Far from soft-pedaling his criticism, King described the American government as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world,” and urged our nation to get on the right side of the liberation struggles occurring around the world. He wondered aloud what the Vietnamese people must think of us, a nation that promises democracy, dignity, and equality but delivers bombs instead.

“We herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met,” he said. “They know they must move on or be destroyed by our bombs.”

In unflinching terms, King condemned the moral bankruptcy of a nation that does not hesitate to invest in bombs and warfare around the world but can never seem to find the dollars to eradicate poverty at home. He called for a revolution of values. He said: 

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.

The moment King ended his speech, he was cancelled. More than 60 newspapers railed against him, including the Washington Post and The New York Times. The Post claimed that King’s speech had “diminished his usefulness to his cause, to his country, and to his people.” Many civil rights leaders and organizations criticized him too, including the NAACP. But despite the withering public condemnation, King continued to speak out against the Vietnam War on both moral and economic grounds until his death.

King was right back then. And he’s still right. He’s just as right today as he was fifty years ago about the corrupting forces of capitalism, militarism, and racism and how they lead inexorably toward war. He was right that, if machines and computers and property rights and profits are considered more important than people, we are doomed. He was right, without knowing it, about climate change. About AI. He was right about mass incarceration and mass deportation without ever knowing those terms. He was right about the threats we now face to our democracy and to our world. He was right about the starving, helpless children in Gaza who are being annihilated by bombs paid for by our tax dollars.