CoF Post 1/20: An MLK Reflection
Dear Cornell on Fire,
We observe Martin Luther King Day with a reflection on his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," penned in 1963 and precisely relevant today:
“I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate...who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action.’”
To be alive on earth now is to be an activist or a moderate. Please be an activist.
King recognized that "we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly." This recognition made him "radical" in his day.
That same recognition should make us all "radicals" today.
As climate breakdown accelerates, a failure to act relegates one to the default category, in every sense of the word — the category of “moderates” whom MLK diagnosed as the real obstruction to justice.
Racism is an essential component of the capitalist system that has allowed the fossil fuel industry to externalize the costs of their operations first onto Black, Brown, Indigenous, and frontline communities – and increasingly, onto all of us. All of our lives will be disrupted by climate breakdown, but those who have benefited most from the privilege and comforts produced by ecocide are the ones best positioned to protect themselves from its effects – and the ones best positioned to stop it. They are running elite institutions like Cornell – indeed, they comprise those institutions. Most of us belong to the globe’s richest 10% or even 1%, the polluter elite whose lifestyles are driving climate change.
Silent pursuit of our own personal “business as usual” is no longer enough. As people who teach, study, work, or live near Cornell University, we must demand that Cornell be accountable to climate justice.
MLK offered an antidote to the tepid convictions of moderates and the comfortable silence of good people: “Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.” Fossil fuels are not confronting the issue of our time. Neither is Cornell University. It’s time to mobilize Cornell to confront the climate emergency.
“We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.”
Help us make creative use of time. Zoom into our working group meeting this Wednesday, January 22, from 1-2pm, check out upcoming opportunities for action, or stay tuned for our New Year Newsletter coming soon.
Immoderately,
Cornell on Fire
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Plurivocality: CoF Posts are written by a revolving team of writers. Our movement is diverse, so are our thoughts, and so will be our posts. If you receive a CoF Post that you think is wrong headed, can we still walk together? (We, like you, sometimes write things we later laugh at!)
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