KOOP Radio is kicking off our 2025 historically & culturally significant celebration events with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr Day, observed on Monday Jan 20th and which KOOP Radio celebrates throughout the entire month of January.
We honor Dr. King, but we celebrate more, his ideas, his words and his vision! Though MLK is best known for his dedication to addressing racial and wealth inequality, he also called for the accountability by our government of its militarism abroad.
Martin Luther King Jr. is known for not just calling out injustice but for doing something about it, peacefully. Besides acts of protest, he reminded us, “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’”. This quote is a call to action to serve others, and with MLK’s Poor Peoples’ Campaign https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org/about/our-principles/ it was to bring focus that we are a country of great wealth but also a country that has the greatest wealth inequality in the world today and that militarism was a great reason why.
MLK’s “Beyond Vietnam” speech delivered at New York’s Riverside Church on April 4, 1967 — exactly one year before his last day of life – expressed a number of concerns that prophetically, are still particularly relevant today some six decades later. In the 4/4/67 speech:
- Dr King pointed out: “the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth.” Fast forward to today: a 1/19/2023 article at the Global Citizen, writes, “The richest 1% own almost half of the world’s wealth, while the poorest half of the world own just 0.75% (of the world’s wealth)” (1)
- Dr King: the US is “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” Fast forward to today: US Military spending exceeds the next ten countries combined! According to statista dot com, the US was the country with the highest military spending worldwide in 2023. The US spent $916 billion dedicated to the military which constituted over 40% of the total military spending worldwide outspending the next 10 countries combined,(2) meanwhile, (2023) The United States has more overseas military bases than every other country combined; “There are roughly 750 US foreign military bases; they are spread across 80 nations! After the U.S is the UK, but they only have 145 bases. Russia has about 3 dozen bases, and China just five. This implies that the U.S has three times as many bases as all other countries combined.”(3) “With a military budget bigger than most countries’ GDPs, the U.S. military station(s) troops in nearly 170 territories, on every continent in the world”(4) and there are approximately 195 countries in the world.
- Dr King: “a nation that continues year after year to spend more $ on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” Fast forward to today: “In FY 2023, out of a $1.8 trillion federal discretionary budget, $1.1 trillion — or 62 percent— was for militarized programs. That includes war and weapons, law enforcement and mass incarceration, and detention and deportation.” Meanwhile in 2023, there was a 16:1 ratio in spending: “The U.S. spent $16 on the military and war for every $1 that was spent on diplomacy and humanitarian foreign aid. The vast majority of militarized spending was for weapons, war and the Pentagon, at $920 billion. Only $56 billion was spent for international affairs, diplomacy, and humanitarian foreign aid.” (5)
Dr. King’s words “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”, still rings true today, conveying the urgency of activism, volunteerism and challenging the powers that be, while claiming that “the most urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?” In other words, we as US citizens are stewards of our democracy and are accountable to call out injustice, especially if committed by our government.
KOOP welcomes you to honor the life and legacy of Dr. King in January and throughout the year within the Austin community by promoting volunteerism and seeking an end to egregious levels of wealth inequality and promoting unjust wars and militarism.
With both new as well as similar issues facing us in 2025, we seek to honor Dr King by asking all to consider what Dr King shared with us then, and seems so relevant today: “We as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society.” And, that we must be the example: “America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war.”
In honor of Dr King and his ideas we invite you to reflect and act on: “Life’s most persistent and urgent question…. ‘What are you doing for others?’ ”
NOTES
(1) https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/wealth-inequality-oxfam-billionaires-elon-musk/
(2) https://www.statista.com/statistics/262742/countries-with-the-highest-military-spending
(3) How Many US Military Bases Are There in the World? 10/1/2023, by Everett Bledsoe / Fact checked by Brain Bartell https://www.thesoldiersproject.org/how-many-us-military-bases-are-there-in-the-world/
(4) Map: Where are American Troops Stationed Overseas?, 7/1/24…https://www.visualcapitalist.com/map-where-are-american-troops-stationed-overseas/
(5) 5/24/23 report from the Institute for Policy Studies, The Warfare State How Funding for Militarism Compromises Our Welfare, https://ips-dc.org/report-warfare-state-how-funding-militarism-compromises-welfare/