He then introduced Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who entered through the back door. As he did, many boos drowned out the applause. Bloomberg looked at the crowd and back at Sharpton.
“I’ve got serious issues,” Sharpton said. “He’s got serious issues. We disagree on those. But I want us to deal in the spirit of King and in solidarity together. This bloodshed’s got to end.”
“We might disagree on some things, but I’ve always thought you were right to be wrong,” Bloomberg told Sharpton, who laughed and sat behind him.
As Bloomberg touted progress in dropping murder rates and rising test scores, many in the crowd continue to boo.
“If you don’t want crime to go down and test scores to go up, than we have nothing in common,” he said. “That’s what we all should want. That’s what Dr. King would have wanted.”
New MLK-inspired banner art by the lovely Alex Citrin on our homepage (and at the top of this Tumblr).
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in front of the United Nations headquarters in New York on April 18, 1967. After leading more than 125,000 peace marchers from Central Park to the U.N., he called for an end to the U.S.’s bombing campaign against North Vietnam. (Photo: John Littlewood/The Christian Science Monitor)
Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam
These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wombs of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the lan d are rising up as never before. “The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.” We in the West must support these revolutions. It is a sad fact that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to ad just to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has the revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism.
We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world—a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.
