MLK Day 2015: Exhuming Dynamite by Ched Myers

It strikes me that having a national MLK holiday is a little like having Bibles in our church pews.  A lot of struggle and work went into preserving and making these sacred, transforming memories and stories available. But that doesn’t mean that most folk actually bother to read, engage and understand them, much less enact them anew.  There’s a certain comfort in having Bibles sitting around, or commemorating King–Google’s front page simulating the Selma march today–that doesn’t upset the status quo.  more//
The irony is captured in the Bible pictured above, safely secured in a glass case.  It was King’s Bible, used by President Obama in his swearing in ceremony.  [An interesting and humorous exploration of this irony is Ezekiel Cinneide’s (presumably a pseudonym, as I can find nothing on him) little satire The President’s Jubilee (2009), in which Obama is haunted by the biblical imperatives around what I call “Sabbath Economics.”]
And yet… the fact of their existence haunts us, and represents a subversive possibility.  Their availability means that we CAN pick up these stories, be confronted by them anew, and seek to recontextualize them in our historical moment.  Which is to say, they are like virtual sticks of dynamite lurking in the basements (or “museums”) of our national unconscious.  Our job is to exhume these venerable texts, study them not as historical artifacts or stained glass windows, but as living traditions calling us to radical change.  To find the fuse, so to speak, in order to light their explosive power anew…  
I’ll be sharing more in this vein at the Clergy and Liaity United for Economic Justice King-Chavez Organizing Summit in L.A. later this week, after the domesticated prayer breakfasts have come and gone…