King

Martin Luther King is a beast.  He can really put things into words that are easy to understand and that really make sense.  In his "Letter from Birmingham City Jail", King makes some really important points.  The first thing that I thought was really cool was the four steps to a nonviolent campaign.  Before he even thinks of taking "direct action", which consist of parades and marches to bring attention to problems, he plans on collecting information to prove that there are injustices, attempt to negotiate, and to self-purify.  It's pretty amazing that before being non-violent, he shows ways to even avoid being that "obnoxious" about it.  And he points out that even when it comes down to direct action, it is simply used to get back to the act of negotiating and bringing the problem to the forefront of a community.  Another point that I thought was pretty awesome was the different kinds of peace.  I'm pretty sure Professor LaLonde mentioned something about it in class, but he says how there can be negative and positive peace.  He describes negative peace as the absence of tension, while positive peace is the presence of justice.  This makes a lot of sense to me.  I think that we should always be questioning ourselves and others, just like in the dilemma of just war, so that we can come closer and closer to true justice.  If there is no tension, that we either have the perfect peace or we are to complacent in the face of injustice.  And it's obvious that we're not perfect so there must be injustice.  In this letter, King really makes me question my views on justice, and I'm sure he made the clergyman he wrote it to do the same.