The East out West 3
The words of Martin Luther King Jnr in Korean at the memorial to him in the gardens of the Yerba Buena centre in downtown San Francisco.
What struck me reading this is that we are always bombarded with the received wisdom that MLK was all about peace, tolerance etc - in other words the sort of platitudes that can just as easily fall from the mouths of intolerant warmongerers these days. But if you read this passage he is saying a whole lot more than ‘let’s be nice to each other’. Martin Luther King may be held up as a campaigner for ‘enlightenment values’ or the true values of the founding fathers, but, pardon me if I’m wrong, this is a critique of capitalism. Of course, he came to his critique from a Christian standpoint, but that should not be unexpected according to the arguments of the book I’m currently reading.
From the Yerba Buena website:
The undeniable centerpiece of Yerba Buena Gardens is the 22-foot-high, 50-foot-wide waterfall that leads to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial. Behind the waterfall are 12 shimmering glass panels engraved with quotes [sic] from Dr. King’s writings and speeches, in English with translations in African and Arabic dialects as well as the languages of San Francisco’s Sister Cities. The Memorial is anchored with a carved image of Dr. King at one end and an image of San Francisco’s community leaders during the 20th anniversary of the March in Golden Gate Park at the other. The Memorial is the first of its kind to truly embrace Dr. King’s vision of peace and international unity in the United States. Collaborating artists were sculptor Houston Conwill, poet Estella Majoza and architect Joseph de Pace.
