Some Thoughts On Stamps

Two Haikus, A Limerick, and some thoughts from the perspective of an addict of stamps.


Haiku:

Is it that a stamp
Can bring me to Nirvana?
Yes, That is the case

2.
I buy you in sheets
Sometimes in excessive rolls
But you complete me

Limerick

There once was an addict of stamps
Whose friends never gave him the chance
To beat his addiction
Which was an affliction
So he retired as a seller of lamps


and finally...

Stamp glue, so divine
Leaving a trace of mint
or lime
Where would I be
Without your adhesive?
It seems that life
Would not be cohesive
In the morning,
Around eight or nine
Paying the bills,
My life isn't
Until my taste buds
Finally grace you
Life is so much better
When I can taste you
Then I find that I am fine
Oh stamp glue, so divine.

Robert Frost makes my Fall

Into My Own

One of my wishes is those dark trees,
so old and firm they scarcely known the breeze,
Were not, as 'twere, the merest mask of gloom,
But stretched away unto the edge of doom.

I should not but beheld that someday
into their vastness I should steal away,
Fearless of ever finding open land,
or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.

I do not see why I should e'er turn back
Or those that should not set forth upon my track
To overtake me, who should miss me here
And long to know if I still held them dear.

They would not know me changed from the him they knew--
Only more sure of all I thought was true.


-Robert Frost

Holy Hell! An Update!

For anyone who has enough spare time to dabble around this thing, I apologize. I acknowledge my lack of diligence in updating. It's slightly pathetic.

So what has happened?
Goodness gracious, what hasn't happened?

The rest of the tour this summer was the most exhausting/exhilirating/exhuberant/exhsomething experience of my life. I hated it at times, I loved it most times, and I want to be on the road again. Sadly, college has once again gotten the better of me.

So in the past few months I have gone from being completely broke and completely happy and carefree to being well payed and overworked/exhausted but driven. I figure, I've got one more semester of this and then I am o-u-t and off into the world. I'm okay with that.

Tony is in Africa, so that's something. I would like to voice my general enthusiasm for that kid. I have never felt/watched myself develop while I was in a relationship like I did with him. Prior to him I felt like every romantic endeavor I had was just part of the process of breaking myself down. For the first time I found myself in something that was building myself back up, and I'm a better person because of it. Hats off to him for going to Africa for two and half years. It'll be interesting to see what man he has grown into when he gets back.

A few weeks ago my cousin Jennifer passed away. It was completely unexpected and traumatic. Also, my first brush with death, and it left me quite shaken. I've come to the conclusion that death is a deep heavy breath for those left behind, a breath of exhaustion. It's also terribly personal and not a subject I care to disclose too much information about on the www.
Let's just say my foundations were stirred, and I'm in the process of repair.

My creative writing minor was probably the greatest idea I've ever had. I'm in four english classes right now, a french class, and media ethics. I've decided writing is an venture I will be in pursuit of for the rest of my life. If I hope to never reach the day where I feel my writing is sufficient and completely refined, because that will be the day I've lost my passion for the written word, if that makes sense.
One accomplishment I am incredibly proud of is the alliance I forged myself over the summer with alot of really great authors.
Books I read this summer (and recommend to the masses)

The Fountainhead
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Extremely Loud, Incredibly Close
Dandelion Wine
Self-help
Chronicle of a Death Foretold
Dharma Bums
Love in the Time of Cholera
The Great Gatsby (again)
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
What is the What
Best American Essays
A Good Man is Hard to Find (and other short stories)
Love
Down and Out in Paris and London
The Prince of Tides

...I think I might be missing a few, but that's the most of them.
It was incredible. I miss having that much free time.

More later, I promise. It's just that I have a big day tomorrow and should probably hit the hay now.

Des Moines, Iowa

I just realized that I had the power to update this and let everyone know what is going on.
So, I'm on tour with my band right now. We have made our way from the safety of our midwestern harbor in Muncie, and three days along we find ourselves in Des Moines, Iowa. I don't believe I had ever been in Iowa before this day. There is nothing like this experience, and I'm not going to give a blow by blow, but I am incredibly proud of where I am at right now. I'm with five of my best friends seeing America in a way that I never thought possible. We all know that this is going to change us, we're going to grow together, in such an authentic way that I doubt it will ever be possible to articulate.
Our first show was in Lombard, Illinois, which is in DuPage County, north of Chicago. Ironically enough, I used to live in DuPage, and it took me about half of the night to realize where we were. It was kind of surreal to be so close to such old stomping ground. I've always been understandably tenative of the Chicago area after living there, but Lombard welcomed us with open arms. We played in the basement of two of the members of Anchors, Balloons, and incredible and amazingly friendly band that would fit in seamlessly in Muncie. The crowd was incredibly enthusiastic and interactive, clapping in places people had never clapped before, and cheering and singing along; as a collective, they became an honorary member of the band. The result was euphoria.
After bonding with them the next day (we crashed on basement couches) we made our way up to Milwaukee. I had only ever been to the Milwaukee zoo before, when I was 12, and a misplaced Polar bear made an incredible impression on me. Needless to say, I didn't really know what to expect out of Milwaukee.
After a misadventure of trying to find the house of Emily, one of our hosts of the evening, we settled in, and we witnessed her Husky, Pablo, howl.
I had no idea that animals were capable of producing sounds like that. Howling sounds nothing like it does in the movies. White Fang had nothing on Pablo.
After an INCREDIBLE vegan dinner (thank you thank you!) we went to the bar that we were playing. Drinks were free, numbers were dialed, and performing went incredibly.
It's an honor to have been so well received so far.
Right now I'm in an incredibly dark bar in Iowa.The second band is playing, we're next.
Tomorrow is my last day of twenty-dom.

I hope Nebraska is ready for us.

"Every problem has a gift for you in its hands"

"Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but in the ability to start over."
-F. Scott Fitzgerald


This is one of those posts that's more for me to reflect on later than for anyone else.

Glasses

So here's something you might not know: occasionally I need glasses.
My prescription is nothing near severe. I can drive legally without them, but it really helps at night and whatnot.
"But Laura," you could say, "I've never seen you with glasses!"
What an astute observation! That's because I lose mine alot. I've lost three pairs of glasses over three years.
I am very talented.
My sophmore year I lost everything all of the time (my keys, my wallet, my glasses, coats, all sorts of necessities), so no surprise there.
So, I've gone the past...five months or so without them. I think I left my last pair in McKinney's class one day. It's a shame.
My mom and I made our way to EyeMart today, because we knew they were having some sort of sale. The sale this week was "Three for the price of one."
So for 79-something-dollars I got three pairs of glasses. (That's a lot of glasses.)


Let's see if I still have them all in three years.

My sister never ceases to amaze me.

This is my sister, the Harvard Grad School Student. The woman who regularly watches Xena: Warrior Princess. The woman who used to make my stuffed animals rap for me.



This is an address she gave on behalf of a Student Volunteer Organization who did benefit work in New Orleans over spring break.

Wednesday, May 09, 2007


Reflections on The Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans
Current mood: tired

I spent my spring break (the end of March) volunteering with fellow students down in the Gulf Coast. We were helping one specific woman clean up her home, which had not been touched since the storm hit.

Today my fellow students and I gave a presentation to our community here at school about what we witnessed, and our reflections on our work. I was asked to reflect, and felt convicted to speak about my experience standing right where the levee broke in the lower ninth ward.

I decided to post my speech. So you all can get to know me a little better. It's one of the most vulnerably honest things I've ever written and then delivered in a public format. The Dean of the Divinity School was there and everything.

Well, Here it is:

Today I do not want to talk about the work that we did. I want to talk about all the work left to do.

On the last day of our trip we traveled into New Orleans. We had arranged to meet with Gene, a facilitator for fellow Harvard volunteers from the Philips Brooks House.

Gene took us on a tour of the devastation that remains in New Orleans. As we wound our way through the unfamiliar city, I suddenly knew where we were. This was the ninth ward. Looking back I see that I probably recognized the area from all the video footage I had seen throughout my fall semester in Professor Green's class. At the time my recognition felt more like intuition, as though the air had suddenly changed. It possessed a heaviness thicker than that of Ocean Springs.

The houses looked as though the hurricane had hit the previous week. FEMA spray pain, bright as ever, was ont he face of each house as we drove through those streets. I knew that the code in the spray paint revealed what FEMA had found there: the number of dead, the number of living, and when the houses had been checked. I also knew that many of these houses were marked but had never actually been investigated.

As we drove through the streets I realized people still lived here. These remnants of houses served as homes for so many people. And that is all that remained - pieces of houses that once stood whole and solid.

The segregated nature of the lower ninth ward was absolutely undeniable. As Irene, one of our fellow student volunteers who is originally from Ghana exclaimed upon our arrival in New Orleans, "There are so many black people here!" As we drove through the ninth ward, echoes of James Cone reverberated in my head:

The meaning of the message for our contemporary situation is clear: the God of the oppressed takes sides with the black community. God is not color-blind in the black-white struggle, but has made an unqualified identification with blacks. This means that the movement for black liberation is the very work of God, effecting God's will among men (and women).

We followed Gene to an area on the edge of town where we pulled our cars over and stepped out onto the abandoned streets. We stood surrounded by empty lots where homes once stood. Now they were covered with overgrown grass and foilage. I was so focused on the area that I did not even turn to see what was behind me until Gene said, "This is where the levee broke."

I turned around to face the levee - the levee I had seen on video footage countless times. Scenes from Spike Lee's documentary on Hurricane Katrina flashed through my brain, but nothing had prepared me for the reality of standing on that ground. Although Gene spoke at length, all I remember hearing him say is "Many of these homes were passed down generation to generation. When the levee broke these people lost everything they had."

Everything they had?! This was not only everything the people currently living there had. This was their inheritance. These were the houses their grandparents scrapped and saved for while doing everything they could to survive Jim Crow America. These houses were the only property owned by the descendents of people who were once considered property. These houses weren't just houses. They were a source of pride and dignity in a country whose history leaves too little to feel honest pride for.

Standing there, where the levee broke, I broke. In front of all my peers and a man I had only just met, I sobbed like a child. The times I have cried like that I can count on one hand.

I cried for the depth of loss in the lower ninth ward - the overwhelming loss of life that could easily have been prevented if we truly worked to love our neighbors as ourselves. I cried for how these people had been failed - not just by nameless government agencies, but failed by all of us.

James Cone spoke again in my head:

We must made decisions about where God is at work so we can join in the fight against evil. But there is no perfect guide for discerning God's movement in the world. Contrary to what many conservatives would say, the Bible is not a blueprint on this matter. It is a valuable symbol for pointing to God's revelation in Jesus, but it is not self-interpreting. We are thus placed in an existential situation of freedom in which the burden is on us to make decisions without a guaranteed ethical guide. This is the risk of faith.

The risk of faith requires us to face our responsibility to the people of New Orleans and the entire Gulf Coast area. We bear responsibility as participants in a social and political structure that not only allows for but perpetuates conditions of such stark inequality. We bear responsibility to our community members here at the Divinity School with families and loved ones affected by Hurricane Katrina. We bear the responsibility as people of faith and scholars of conscience to fight injustice whenever and wherever it exists.

Injustice exists in the lower ninth ward of New Orleans. Now I, like my fellow students on the trip, bear the special responsibility of witness. As a witness I cannot turn my back on this abandoned community. I cannot let my community here in Cambridge forget what so many of us have seen. We cannot fail to

Open our mouths for the mute,
For the rights of all the unfortunate.
Open our mouths, judge righteously
And defend the rights of the afflicted and needy.*

Amen.


* Proverbs 31:8-9




I'm so stinking proud of her.

Odd Times

The past few weeks have been strange with their highs and lows. I think my life might be trying to mimic indiana's weather patterns.
There's the chance that I might not be working at the MTCup much longer, which is a strange fact for me to wrap my head around. Those espresso stained walls have been my sanctuary and my hell for the past two years. I didn't have any scars until I started working there. Now I have at least eight on my right arm.
I'm over my mountains of molehills stage. It's not as if I wanted to work there for the rest of my life. It's the sense of community that I've gained over the past two years there that is at stake. I grew up in transitions. I've attended well over a dozen different schools and lived in nine different states. Stability and permanence had been nothing more than notions to me.
Working there changed that. I began to interact with members of the community from all walks of life on a daily basis. My co-workers became my family. I began to feel at home.
When I was sick and hospitalized at Ball Memorial, one of the regulars rushed me up through the ER waiting list, and sat by my bedside while my IV's dripped, to make sure that I would be okay. When a spanish professor noticed I was having a hard time last year, he repeatedly quoted "This too shall pass." Advice that has stuck with me, and I pass on. If it weren't for my friend Kennon, who gets a grande coffee almost every day before he goes to work or kung-fu, I wouldn't be going to LA to record my album in the fall.
Those are just three people. They've all made significant impacts on me.
That job has taught me how to put love and hard labor into your work and watch the pay-off. Being a barista isn't easy. One gallon of milk weighs 8.25 lbs. We carry five at a time. My hands have callouses on them from the tampers and the groupheads. I know more about frothing milk than I ever could have imagined. But the callouses, scars, and heavy lifting are part of a reward. I know how a good latte can make someone's day. I wouldn't work minimum wage for two years just anywhere. What has kept me there for so long are the people, and the satisfaction of knowing that I've made a difference in their days when I go home exhausted.
If it's time for me to move on in life, then I will make my peace with that. I'm not going to be petty or sacrifice any of my dignity, because I believe that the MTCup and I have given and taken equally from one another. I have nothing to be bitter about. If I do leave, I will do so with grace and respect for the community that has given me so much. Hopefully I can do something with everything that I have learned there.
"This too shall pass."

Developments

I love it when you write something and then stumble across it like an acquaintance you forgot you met.
This week is going to be incredibly rewarding I think. the In Print festival is this week at Ball State, and three newly published authors are coming to discuss their work and talk about being published. All of their work is incredible, as well as inspiring, and I look forward to having the oppurtunity of hearing them read.
(Dave Griffith: A Good War is Hard to Find-go read it.)
Mini road trip during the day with my good friend Amanda to Indy on Friday. We're going to go hang out with her mom and then look at H&M's new spring line. We're both making mixes for the ride there and back because we're nerds like that. (Nerds=synonymous with amazing.) I'm playing a house show that night, and then on Saturday I get to see Cari and Rache for the first time in God knows how long for Cari's wedding shower.
It would be one kind of excitement to see them both individually. Cari moved to New Orleans last year, and then Rache is in Tallahassee (and soon LA-- because she got into GRAD SCHOOL AT USC! That's my best friend), so I don't get to see them very often. In fact, I haven't seen Cari since Rache's goodbye party in August, and that was only for twenty minutes. Needless to say, I am jubilative.
Saturday night Rodeo Ruby Love (www.myspace.com/rodeorubylove) is playing at the Village Green. They're amazing people, and amazing musicians. I'm very excited to spend time with them.
So yes, la vive est bella.

Here are the peices I rediscovered.


DEVELOPMENTS (written 2/15/07 I believe)

You should paint all night
I could call you Van Gogh
You could paint me the stars
People wouldn't understand it at first
The beauty in the way you see things.

I should write this all down
You could call me Neruda
As I cast my nets into your skies
People wouldn't understand it at first
The meaning in my metaphors

You could call me yours
We could change the world with the way we see things
And calling eachother names.


SWING

I feel like swinging
To have the stars beneath my feet
To feel the air rush at me, burning

worthy of note

I just realized I not only get to see my parents in a few days. ...
I get to see my cat.

This Waltz Will Wear Us Down

So, spring break is in a few days. Hurrah!
I have this wonderfully imposing reading list that I intend to conquer over the course of the next week. My spring break will consist of working, sleeping, voracious reading, hanging out with Mom, and watching bad kung-fu movies with my Dad.
I can't contain my excitement to see them, it's been too long. I hate that I only see them every few months.

Other good news is I heard back from Secretly Canadian yesterday about my internship. It's good to know that I'm going to get to follow through with my goals. I've wanted to intern for them for a long time now, and I've worked really hard to make sure that happens.

I'm recording my solo stuff this weekend with my friend Dan. He's a music engineering major, and hopefully very good at what he does. Anyway, the song is one of my newest, and I like it.
Here, I'll share lyrics. :

This Waltz Will Wear Us Down

I never was the child for building castles,
To watch them wash away seemed so demeaning
Running back and forth from sea to mother
Saving all the shells, their remnants priceless
There are things to be salvaged here.

Gave up for years
Something hiding,
Harbored in me
Salvage, Scattered
Building again
Building Slowly
Victim of my own making
I know the feeling
of the beating tide
There are things to be salvaged here.

Porous bones cause for brittle beginnings
It seems my patience is wearing thin
You ask me of my expectations
Simple allegiance is all I'm asking for here
There are things to be salvaged, here.

Did sands of time erode at your bones?
Wearing at you,
Wearing slowly?
He wore me down,
Swallowed me whole
I know the feeling
Of the beating tide
There are things to be salvaged here.


And post a pretty picture.



P.S: Give me a year, I'm going back to Hawaii.

Frustration.

I'm writing-ish a paper right now, it's not that bad it's just boring.

My week should have felt alot worse than it did, because alot of not-so-fun things happened. However! all of these circumstances made me reevaluate what I want and what is really important to me.
Change is underway.
Some major changes, some minor.
And I've ammended to be a lot less passive when it comes to life, and the things that I love.
I've also decided to stop rewarding people who haven't done anything for me. I can't think of a way to word this delicately enough, without getting into gory specifics. Specifics don't matter, this resolution is the result of many different specific circumstances. In a positive light, this week has made me realize how many amazing people I have in my life.
Also, developing friendships make me really happy. I hung out with Rebecca and Julie this weekend, and they are both so refreshing.

I had a nightmare with some old haunts last night though, which caused me to wake up feeling slightly unrested.

Rebecca and I have ammended to bring back sashes being tied around the head, audrey hepburn style. When we watched Breakfast at Tiffany's this weekend I really comprehended it at the level I had always wanted to, and known I could, but never had before. Its a really amazing movie. Tomorrow I plan to teach myself Moon River so I can cover it.

Fantastical!

Mt. Hood

Earlier this winter/late fall, a group of climbers got lost in an avalanche in Mt. Hood, Oregon. For some reason this deeply bothered me and continues too. It's very seldom that I follow a news story closely.
I found a peice of prose that I wrote about it in January. Edited it, and now am sharing it.

[Mt. Hood, Where Have You Taken Her Lover?]

I was climbing because there was some part of me hiding up there.
It was a beautiful pennance; I owed it to myself to go.
It's true, the air thins.
It attacks you from the inside, knives in your lungs,
Darting.

I was climbing because I love the distant world beneath me,
Because I believe in something higher

From up high I could see part of you was up there
I needed to claim it for you
Make my way back down

The fog weighed something, darling,
Something heavy and treacherous,
The feeling of bones aching to the marrow.
But the distant world above me,
everything I was searching for
Fell upon me, unexpected
I lost myself then, in my search.

It was cold in its sparseness,
Crippling from the outside,
Sharp darting knives.

I lost something then
But I will keep the remnants in this place, a pennance
With this world distant, beneath me.

my life and the divine.

So i was thinking about fate, and faith this morning, and how I hadn't thought about them at all lately. How much that bothers me.
And I'm wandering around my apartment to discover a taoism book that stevi got me for christmas, and I opened it up to a page that says there is no fate. This really upset me, caused me to want to yell at the book.
I've lost sight of my goals and what I demand out of life lately, and have failed to appreciatte what is in front of me, and what it is that I love. I've just been going with the motions.
That nonchalance is not an accurate expression of who I am.
So...I'm giving myself the next few weeks to get my shit together and start making things happen for me.
I'll make my own fate.

Three shows this weekend. One tomorrow night at IU, Friday at Muncie Alliance, Saturday at Village Green.

This is intense.

Something's off

Two days in a row of that specific breed where you don't feel like being alone, don't find yourself isolated, but even when you're around people...it's solo.
I did not enjoy waking up alone this morning.
I do enjoy reading, I read three chapters in my audio technology book last night, and I think my brain expanded a little.
I'm tired, so I drank coffee, after going to bed early the night before. It just doesn't make much sense.
And if anyone knows me, and reads this, you know I don't rant like this.
I feel like I'm off my axis.
If I moved to Uranus, would that mean I would feel at home? (Uranus is off of it's axis. And it has rings around it too, rings that no one acknowledges because they're more subtle than Saturn's gaudiness).
Someone, give me a conversation of substance and some direction and I'll be happy.
Or maybe that's just something I have to give myself.

Exploits

I'm sitting in Terre Haute right now, waiting for a show, we're playing last out of four bands and so far only one has played, so I'll be here for a while. This also means that I probably won't be getting home until three o'clock in the morning.
Lovely.
In other news
All of my band mates are in really strange moods right now, and all i want to do is sit in a corner and read/write/draw ishnessesque.
Yesterday was divine, I got out of classes around one and hung out with Stevi for quite some time. Then finally after a long awaited...waiting? Dan called me, Everthus The Deadbeats were playing a show in Muncie before they made their way up to Chicago town. I met up with him at Doc's and we had an incredible time. It was really nice to run into friends that I don't see very often because I don't go out like that much. Everthus did incredibly well, they even got an encore.
I would be more impressed with the encore if Lisa hadn't confided with me that they cheated to get it. The Deadbeats have this tactic where they save one of their most popular songs for the very last, and then stop at the song before it. And in their home audience like Muncie they anticipated the encore. I envy them because they played so incredibly tight, I think that this has alot to do with the fact that they are all living together right now, and practice almost all of the time. I can't wait until I have the oppurtunity to do that with my boys. Honestly that would mean the world to me.
I just can't wait to hit the road, I love what I do.

In other news. Whole wheat chocolate chip pancakes are probably the most scrumptuous, delicious, mind blowing things in the world. Dan and I made some this morning for breakfast. The night before we shared this exchange regarding our anticipation of them in the morning.
"I bet it will be liberating."
"Yeah, it will be like the liberty bell."
"Or the Bill of Rights."
"Yes James Madison will be there."
"James Madison will come to my apartment and make us breakfast, and then hand us the Bill of Rights."
"YES."

This is a typical conversation between Dan and I . And I love it.
It was a divine evening and morning, I'll just leave it there.

Break During class

So night classes can be a little overwhelming I've decided. This whole having class until nine thing is really throwing me off. Might be the source of my insomnia? Since I was the grandma for so long, in the house by nine usually, and now I'm JUST getting in at nine. So yes, this schedule is throwing me off.

I am, however, the recipient of a free Jimmy John's sandwich, which wouldn't have happened (necessarilly, okay it very well could have happened, it's been known to happen) anyway, I wasn't anticipating getting a free one tonight while I was in class.

I've been on a letter writing binge lately, I just wrote my friend Blake in Utah, and I've written three other people in the past week. It feels really good. Letter writing, I'm afraid, is becoming a bit of a lost art, and that's really sad. It's giving part of yourself away to the other person to hold on to. You gain a part of someone else whenever you get a letter, as cliche-ish as that may seem, it's true. It's that warm fuzzy feeling that you get when you open your mailbox and there's something in it other than a bill.

Go read Major Sullivan Ballou's letter to his wife from the battle of bull run and tell me I'm wrong

slipping into insomnia again.

I haven't slept easily in weeks. When I do sleep, it is well.
But I liked being the old lady friend of everyone who hit the hay by eleven.
Yet here I am at 2:19 in the a.m., looking longingly at my pillow, and brainstorming a better method to lull myself to sleep than counting sheep.
I would read, but that would certainly keep me up for the rest of the night...unlike alot of people I know, reading wakes me up.

Hm...

Letter From Birmingham Jail

April 16, 1963

MY DEAR FELLOW CLERGYMEN:

While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities "unwise and untimely." Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statements in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.

I think I should indicate why I am here In Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the view which argues against "outsiders coming in." I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty-five affiliated organizations across the South, and one of them is the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Frequently we share staff, educational and financial resources with our affiliates. Several months ago the affiliate here in Birmingham asked us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct-action program if such were deemed necessary. We readily consented, and when the hour came we lived up to our promise. So I, along with several members of my staff, am here because I was invited here I am here because I have organizational ties here.

But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco-Roman world, so am I. compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

You deplore the demonstrations taking place In Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city's white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.

In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self-purification; and direct action. We have gone through an these steps in Birmingham. There can be no gainsaying the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of brutality is widely known. Negroes have experienced grossly unjust treatment in the courts. There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any other city in the nation. These are the hard, brutal facts of the case. On the basis of these conditions, Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the latter consistently refused to engage in good-faith negotiation.

Then, last September, came the opportunity to talk with leaders of Birmingham's economic community. In the course of the negotiations, certain promises were made by the merchants --- for example, to remove the stores humiliating racial signs. On the basis of these promises, the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and the leaders of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights agreed to a moratorium on all demonstrations. As the weeks and months went by, we realized that we were the victims of a broken promise. A few signs, briefly removed, returned; the others remained.

As in so many past experiences, our hopes bad been blasted, and the shadow of deep disappointment settled upon us. We had no alternative except to prepare for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and the national community. Mindful of the difficulties involved, we decided to undertake a process of self-purification. We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked ourselves : "Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?" "Are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?" We decided to schedule our direct-action program for the Easter season, realizing that except for Christmas, this is the main shopping period of the year. Knowing that a strong economic with with-drawal program would be the by-product of direct action, we felt that this would be the best time to bring pressure to bear on the merchants for the needed change.

Then it occurred to us that Birmingham's mayoralty election was coming up in March, and we speedily decided to postpone action until after election day. When we discovered that the Commissioner of Public Safety, Eugene "Bull" Connor, had piled up enough votes to be in the run-oat we decided again to postpone action until the day after the run-off so that the demonstrations could not be used to cloud the issues. Like many others, we waited to see Mr. Connor defeated, and to this end we endured postponement after postponement. Having aided in this community need, we felt that our direct-action program could be delayed no longer.

You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling, for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. 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. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent-resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, we must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.

The purpose of our direct-action program is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.

One of the basic points in your statement is that the action that I and my associates have taken in Birmingham is untimely. Some have asked: "Why didn't you give the new city administration time to act?" The only answer that I can give to this query is that the new Birmingham administration must be prodded about as much as the outgoing one, before it will act. We are sadly mistaken if we feel that the election of Albert Boutwell as mayor will bring the millennium to Birmingham. While Mr. Boutwell is a much more gentle person than Mr. Connor, they are both segregationists, dedicated to maintenance of the status quo. I have hope that Mr. Boutwell will be reasonable enough to see the futility of massive resistance to desegregation. But he will not see this without pressure from devotees of civil rights. My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant 'Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you no forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.

You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may won ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there fire two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the Brat to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all"

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distort the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an "I-it" relationship for an "I-thou" relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and awful. Paul Tillich said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression 'of man's tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong.

Let us consider a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal.

Let me give another explanation. A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had no part in enacting or devising the law. Who can say that the legislature of Alabama which set up that state's segregation laws was democratically elected? Throughout Alabama all sorts of devious methods are used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters, and there are some counties in which, even though Negroes constitute a majority of the population, not a single Negro is registered. Can any law enacted under such circumstances be considered democratically structured?

Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. For instance, I have been arrested on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong in having an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade. But such an ordinance becomes unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and to deny citizens the First Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and protest.

I hope you are able to ace the distinction I am trying to point out. In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was evidenced sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar, on the ground that a higher moral law was at stake. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks rather than submit to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire. To a degree, academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience. In our own nation, the Boston Tea Party represented a massive act of civil disobedience.

We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal." It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country's antireligious laws.

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but 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"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fan in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with an its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion? Isn't this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn't this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries precipitated the act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock? Isn't this like condemning Jesus because his unique God-consciousness and never-ceasing devotion to God's will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see that, as the federal courts have consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber.

I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relation to the struggle for freedom. I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: "An Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth." Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely rational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this 'hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to 6e solid rock of human dignity.

You speak of our activity in Birmingham as extreme. At fist I was rather disappointed that fellow clergymen would see my nonviolent efforts as those of an extremist. I began thinking about the fact that stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the Negro community. One is a force of complacency, made up in part of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, are so drained of self-respect and a sense of "somebodiness" that they have adjusted to segregation; and in part of a few middle class Negroes who, because of a degree of academic and economic security and because in some ways they profit by segregation, have become insensitive to the problems of the masses. The other force is one of bitterness and hatred, and it comes perilously close to advocating violence. It is expressed in the various black nationalist groups that are springing up across the nation, the largest and best-known being Elijah Muhammad's Muslim movement. Nourished by the Negro's frustration over the continued existence of racial discrimination, this movement is made up of people who have lost faith in America, who have absolutely repudiated Christianity, and who have concluded that the white man is an incorrigible "devil."

I have tried to stand between these two forces, saying that we need emulate neither the "do-nothingism" of the complacent nor the hatred and despair of the black nationalist. For there is the more excellent way of love and nonviolent protest. I am grateful to God that, through the influence of the Negro church, the way of nonviolence became an integral part of our struggle.

If this philosophy had not emerged, by now many streets of the South would, I am convinced, be flowing with blood. And I am further convinced that if our white brothers dismiss as "rabble-rousers" and "outside agitators" those of us who employ nonviolent direct action, and if they refuse to support our nonviolent efforts, millions of Negroes will, out of frustration and despair, seek solace and security in black-nationalist ideologies a development that would inevitably lead to a frightening racial nightmare.

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself, and that is what has happened to the American Negro. Something within has reminded him of his birthright of freedom, and something without has reminded him that it can be gained. Consciously or unconsciously, he has been caught up by the Zeitgeist, and with his black brothers of Africa and his brown and yellow brothers of Asia, South America and the Caribbean, the United States Negro is moving with a sense of great urgency toward the promised land of racial justice. If one recognizes this vital urge that has engulfed the Negro community, one should readily understand why public demonstrations are taking place. The Negro has many pent-up resentments and latent frustrations, and he must release them. So let him march; let him make prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; let him go on freedom rides-and try to understand why he must do so. If his repressed emotions are not released in nonviolent ways, they will seek expression through violence; this is not a threat but a fact of history. So I have not said to my people: "Get rid of your discontent." Rather, I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled into the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action. And now this approach is being termed extremist.

But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist: "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God." And John Bunyan: "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience." And Abraham Lincoln: "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free." And Thomas Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that an men are created equal ..." So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we viii be. We we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremist for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary's hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime---the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jeans Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

I had hoped that the white moderate would see this need. Perhaps I was too optimistic; perhaps I expected too much. I suppose I should have realized that few members of the oppressor race can understand the deep groans and passionate yearnings of the oppressed race, and still fewer have the vision to see that injustice must be rooted out by strong, persistent and determined action. I am thankful, however, that some of our white brothers in the South have grasped the meaning of this social revolution and committed themselves to it. They are still too few in quantity, but they are big in quality. Some-such as Ralph McGill, Lillian Smith, Harry Golden, James McBride Dabbs, Ann Braden and Sarah Patton Boyle---have written about our struggle in eloquent and prophetic terms. Others have marched with us down nameless streets of the South. They have languished in filthy, roach-infested jails, suffering the abuse and brutality of policemen who view them as "dirty nigger lovers." Unlike so many of their moderate brothers and sisters, they have recognized the urgency of the moment and sensed the need for powerful "action" antidotes to combat the disease of segregation.

Let me take note of my other major disappointment. I have been so greatly disappointed with the white church and its leadership. Of course, there are some notable exceptions. I am not unmindful of the fact that each of you has taken some significant stands on this issue. I commend you, Reverend Stallings, for your Christian stand on this past Sunday, in welcoming Negroes to your worship service on a non segregated basis. I commend the Catholic leaders of this state for integrating Spring Hill College several years ago.

But despite these notable exceptions, I must honestly reiterate that I have been disappointed with the church. I do not say this as one of those negative critics who can always find something wrong with the church. I say this as a minister of the gospel, who loves the church; who was nurtured in its bosom; who 'has been sustained by its spiritual blessings and who will remain true to it as long as the cord of Rio shall lengthen.

When I was suddenly catapulted into the leadership of the bus protest in Montgomery, Alabama, a few years ago, I felt we would be supported by the white church felt that the white ministers, priests and rabbis of the South would be among our strongest allies. Instead, some have been outright opponents, refusing to understand the freedom movement and misrepresenting its leader era; an too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained-glass windows.

In spite of my shattered dreams, I came to Birmingham with the hope that the white religious leadership of this community would see the justice of our cause and, with deep moral concern, would serve as the channel through which our just grievances could reach the power structure. I had hoped that each of you would understand. But again I have been disappointed.

I have heard numerous southern religious leaders admonish their worshipers to comply with a desegregation decision because it is the law, but I have longed to hear white ministers declare: "Follow this decree because integration is morally right and because the Negro is your brother." In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churchmen stand on the sideline and mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard many ministers say: "Those are social issues, with which the gospel has no real concern." And I have watched many churches commit themselves to a completely other worldly religion which makes a strange, on Biblical distinction between body and soul, between the sacred and the secular.

I have traveled the length and breadth of Alabama, Mississippi and all the other southern states. On sweltering summer days and crisp autumn mornings I have looked at the South's beautiful churches with their lofty spires pointing heavenward. I have beheld the impressive outlines of her massive religious-education buildings. Over and over I have found myself asking: "What kind of people worship here? Who is their God? Where were their voices when the lips of Governor Barnett dripped with words of interposition and nullification? Where were they when Governor Walleye gave a clarion call for defiance and hatred? Where were their voices of support when bruised and weary Negro men and women decided to rise from the dark dungeons of complacency to the bright hills of creative protest?"

Yes, these questions are still in my mind. In deep disappointment I have wept over the laxity of the church. But be assured that my tears have been tears of love. There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love. Yes, I love the church. How could I do otherwise? l am in the rather unique position of being the son, the grandson and the great-grandson of preachers. Yes, I see the church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists.

There was a time when the church was very powerful in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being "disturbers of the peace" and "outside agitators"' But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were "a colony of heaven," called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God intoxicated to be "astronomically intimidated." By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide. and gladiatorial contests.

Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Par from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent and often even vocal sanction of things as they are.

But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it vi lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.

Perhaps I have once again been too optimistic. Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world? Perhaps I must turn my faith to the inner spiritual church, the church within the church, as the true ekklesia and the hope of the world. But again I am thankful to God that some noble souls from the ranks of organized religion have broken loose from the paralyzing chains of conformity and joined us as active partners in the struggle for freedom, They have left their secure congregations and walked the streets of Albany, Georgia, with us. They have gone down the highways of the South on tortuous rides for freedom. Yes, they have gone to jai with us. Some have been dismissed from their churches, have lost the support of their bishops and fellow ministers. But they have acted in the faith that right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. Their witness has been the spiritual salt that has preserved the true meaning of the gospel in these troubled times. They have carved a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of disappointment.

I hope the church as a whole will meet the challenge of this decisive hour. But even if the church does not come to the aid of justice, I have no despair about the future. I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our motives are at present misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham, ham and all over the nation, because the goal of America k freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with America's destiny. Before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence across the pages of history, we were here. For more than two centuries our forebears labored in this country without wages; they made cotton king; they built the homes of their masters while suffering gross injustice and shameful humiliation-and yet out of a bottomless vitality they continued to thrive and develop. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands.

Before closing I feel impelled to mention one other point in your statement that has troubled me profoundly. You warmly commended the Birmingham police force for keeping "order" and "preventing violence." I doubt that you would have so warmly commended the police force if you had seen its dogs sinking their teeth into unarmed, nonviolent Negroes. I doubt that you would so quickly commend the policemen if .you were to observe their ugly and inhumane treatment of Negroes here in the city jail; if you were to watch them push and curse old Negro women and young Negro girls; if you were to see them slap and kick old Negro men and young boys; if you were to observe them, as they did on two occasions, refuse to give us food because we wanted to sing our grace together. I cannot join you in your praise of the Birmingham police department.

It is true that the police have exercised a degree of discipline in handing the demonstrators. In this sense they have conducted themselves rather "nonviolently" in pubic. But for what purpose? To preserve the evil system of segregation. Over the past few years I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends. Perhaps Mr. Connor and his policemen have been rather nonviolent in public, as was Chief Pritchett in Albany, Georgia but they have used the moral means of nonviolence to maintain the immoral end of racial injustice. As T. S. Eliot has said: "The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason."

I wish you had commended the Negro sit-inners and demonstrators of Birmingham for their sublime courage, their willingness to suffer and their amazing discipline in the midst of great provocation. One day the South will recognize its real heroes. They will be the James Merediths, with the noble sense of purpose that enables them to face Jeering, and hostile mobs, and with the agonizing loneliness that characterizes the life of the pioneer. They will be old, oppressed, battered Negro women, symbolized in a seventy-two-year-old woman in Montgomery, Alabama, who rose up with a sense of dignity and with her people decided not to ride segregated buses, and who responded with ungrammatical profundity to one who inquired about her weariness: "My fleets is tired, but my soul is at rest." They will be the young high school and college students, the young ministers of the gospel and a host of their elders, courageously and nonviolently sitting in at lunch counters and willingly going to jail for conscience' sake. One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo-Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

Never before have I written so long a letter. I'm afraid it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else can one do when he k alone in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts and pray long prayers?

If I have said anything in this letter that overstates the truth and indicates an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything that understates the truth and indicates my having a patience that allows me to settle for anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me.

I hope this letter finds you strong in the faith. I also hope that circumstances will soon make it possible for me to meet each of you, not as an integrationist or a civil rights leader but as a fellow clergyman and a Christian brother. Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.

Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood,

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

Oh what a strange course of events.

I realize that it has been an incredibly long time since I last blogged, and I apologize.
Some weird things happened, and some unweird things happened... that's all the information I'm going to provide, so that I can pretend that I'm mysterious.
Let's face some facts though, mysterious people don't usually blog; if/when mysterious people do blog there's usually a lot of artsy fartsy photography involved, and a few profound quotes, and the entries don't really tell you anything about the person behind it, other than their mysteriousness.
To be mysterious is to be boring.
In other news, my band played a show in Indianapolis this weekend, and it went really well under the circumstances. For any and all who inhabit the indy area, keep an eye out for us in the Broadripple Gazette and the IUPUI magazine. As for the performance...
I get really nervous when loved ones are near, and my sister and her fiance was there, so I was alot more nervous than usual. Plus, the venue was incredibly warm. There were some technical difficulties, like at one point my microphone stand needed to pop a viagra, because the mic kept falling down, much to my embarrasment, and at one point (luckily in a song I don't sing along to) fell off of the input.
But despite all of this, I feel inclined to say that we played incredibly well.
After the show I went puddle stomping with Dan in the back alley, which really was more of me puddle stomping on my own, because Dan was a chicken and had hemp shoes on. I accidentally jumped into one that was more or less a foot deep and had to ride the entire way home with soaked pant legs, shoes, and socks.
When we got home my soaked legs, shoes and socks made their way to Ball Memorial's Emergency Room, to aid in care for the love of my life/roommate Stevi, who had been admitted with severe vertigo, nausea, and dizziness. She had been sick earlier in the day, but apparently it had only gotten worse. The keen doctors at Ball Memorial took their sweet time with her, Eric and I sat there for more than an hour and a half without a single attendent coming in and checking up on her.
All in all, it was lame.

I think I need to exercise my blogging muscles more, because this one is kind of lame.
Good news:
I bought my ticket for Boston for the first week of April to hang out with my sister and her fiancee and their friends.
I'm really looking forward to South by Southwest
All of my classes are amazing.