King, “I moved to break the betrayal of my own silences...society gone mad on war devastating the hopes of the poor at home sending sons, brothers, husbands to fight and to die 8,000 miles away...for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent...the making of peace is so obvious. End all bombing!

“as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences... many persons have questioned me ... "Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King?" "Why are you joining the voices of dissent?" ... their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live...

There is ... a very obvious ... connection between the war ...and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America...

the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings... I watched this program broken and eviscerated, as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war...So, I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such...

the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die ... eight thousand miles away...

For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent...the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today is my own government

America's soul becomes totally poisoned...as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over...

the making of peace is so obvious ...the good news was meant for all men -- for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative?

For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to recolonize Vietnam...After the French were defeated...there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators, our chosen man, Premier Diem. The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly rooted out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords, and refused even to discuss reunification with the North. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by United States' influence and then by increasing numbers of United States troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem's methods had aroused... the long line of military dictators seemed to offer no real change, especially in terms of their need for land and peace...

they languish under our bombs and consider us, not their fellow Vietnamese, the real enemy...the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy, and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor...Each day the war goes on the hatred increases...no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions...the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horrible, clumsy, and deadly game we have decided to play...I would like to suggest... Number one: End all bombing...

The war...is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit...During the past ten years, we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which has now justified the presence of U.S. military advisors in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death...

This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has a revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real ...Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and ... declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism.