MLK never stops being relevant and right to a 'T'.
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, so 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.
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."
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 well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first 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."
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 fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.
I am skeptical this is about Trump or 3rd terms at all, apart from creating the veneer of legality their base uses to continue their calculated disregard for the harm they are doing. They know that an Amendment is impossible to pass via congress in this climate, so I wonder if this is just a vehicle to re-interpret the requirements for a ConCon (Article V Constitutional Convention) amendment.
For a little background, Article V of the Constitution stipulates that Amendments can only be passed by 2 methods:
This has been attempted not infrequently, but has never successfully happened. All 27 Amendments have been passed through Congress, and a ConCon has never been called since the first one (when the Constitution was initially ratified). It's a particularly fancied route by Conservatives, because 1) Red state legislatures tend to be more 'radical' conservatives then their respective congresspersons, and 2) there are no fixed limits on what can happen in a ConCon: you could call one for any stated purpose, and then just decide to propose whatever the hell you want when you're there.
Article V is also very short, being one single sentence. This is the entirety of the text:
Given our current SCOTUS and Trump and his ilk, I would be worried that they will try to "re-interpret"
to mean 3/4 of the states present at the ConCon. In a scenario where 34 states (2/3) hold one and exclude others from taking part, this could lower the number of states required to ratify a new Amendment from 38 to 26, putting Amendments squarely within reach of Trump's 2024 bloc of 27 states. At that point, they could literally "amend" in anything and everything.