This MLK Day, Don’t Lose Dr. King’s Radicalism
As an organization committed to dismantling America’s carceral state, we return this MLK Day to Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Written in response to critics who called his protests “unwise and untimely,” the letter reads less like a historical artifact than a mirror. The language of delay, decorum, and moderation is still the preferred vocabulary of those uncomfortable with change.
Dr. King was never a moderate figure. If he were alive today, he would face the same backlash from many who now sanitize his legacy. He was jailed for his beliefs. He was surveilled by the FBI. The federal government treated his family as a threat to national security. Police and lawmakers worked relentlessly to silence him. This is not the record of a consensus builder. It is the record of a radical.
The label applied to him then, dangerous, disruptive, a threat to order, sounds familiar because it is. “Domestic terrorist” is the modern iteration, affixed to those who resist oppression today. Dr. King anticipated this dynamic in Birmingham: “You deplore the demonstrations… but fail to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations.” It is easier to condemn disruption than to confront injustice.
That instinct remains widespread. Protesters are blamed for unsettling comfort while inequity deepens. Freedoms are curtailed. Black, Brown, and poor communities continue to bear the brunt of systemic discrimination, especially within the criminal legal system. And those who object are arrested for exercising their most basic rights.
Dr. King was clear-eyed about power: “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” Demands for justice are always deemed premature, unrealistic, or excessive until history vindicates them. Dr. King knew the cost of that demand. He knew the inside of a jail cell. He was shot while demonstrating and ultimately assassinated.
Radical change has never come from moderation. It has come from people willing to act when the moment was declared inconvenient. Ending the incarceration of women and girls is a radical goal and a necessary one. This MLK Day, honor Dr. King not with platitudes, but with practice. Stand with the oppressed. Do the work not just today, but in the months and years ahead.
