[PublicPopForum] Martin Luther King on Family Planning
Alan
adit...@juno.com
To: Child...@yahoogroups.com,childf...@yahoogroups.com,
conscientious...@yahoogroups.com,
overpop...@yahoogroups.com,
Overpopulat...@yahoogroups.com, why_...@yahoogroups.com,
population-gr...@yahoogroups.com,
stoppopul...@yahoogroups.com, childf...@yahoogroups.com
Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2009 14:22:09 -0500
Subject: [PublicPopForum] Martin Luther King on Family Planning
This is a very pleasant surprise and need much more distribution so
that with luck it might go viral. The only major question I have is,
who is "we"? Since it's certainly unrealistic to imagine that "we"
could be the people of the world or of the United States, the only
possibility is that "we" are the people concentrated in a few thinking
municipalities like San Francisco or King's own Boston (though these
are both too big, perhaps Cambridge and Berkeley), who can set such
spending examples on a municipal basis, the applicable municipal
"resources" being primarily classrooms and associated property taxes.
-Alan
ma...@Australianpoet.com>
To: PopF...@yahoogroups.com, "Public Population Forum"
<PublicP...@yahoogroups.com>
Cc: Gregg Borschmann <talking...@gmail.com>,jr...@bigpond.com
Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2009 09:12:32 +1100
Subject: [PublicPopForum] Martin Luther King on Family Planning
Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.200901...@australianpoet.com>
From Tim Murray in Canada:
And perhaps the basis for a press release tomorrow?
Cheers,
Mark
January 19 is Martin Luther King day. It has been my tradition to trot
out one of his most unknown quotes. You probably have read it, but too
many have not. Circulate it widely, please. PS I was a teenager when
he appeared on so many talk shows. Apart from his captivating and
stirring speeches, his calm reason and supreme intelligence---on so
many issues---still impresses me. He was a giant. And he was more
literate than Obama on the ecological facts of life, obviously. But
then, so many more were in the late sixties too. Tim
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Family Planning A Special and Urgent Concern
by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Recently, the press has been filled with reports of sightings of
flying saucers. While we need not give credence to these stories, they
allow our imagination to speculate on how visitors from outer space
would judge us. I am afraid they would be stupefied at our conduct.
They would observe that for death planning we spend billions to create
engines and strategies for war. They would also observe that we spend
millions to prevent death by disease and other causes. Finally they
would observe that we spend paltry sums for population planning, even
though its spontaneous growth is an urgent threat to life on our
planet. Our visitors from outer space could be forgiven if they
reported home that our planet is inhabited by a race of insane men
whose future is bleak and uncertain.
There is no human circumstance more tragic than the persisting
existence of a harmful condition for which a remedy is readily
available. Family planning, to relate population to world resources,
is possible, practical and necessary. Unlike plagues of the dark ages
or contemporary diseases we do not yet understand, the modern plague
of overpopulation is soluble by means we have discovered and with
resources we possess.
What is lacking is not sufficient knowledge of the solution but
universal consciousness of the gravity of the problem and education of
the billions who are its victims.
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/about-us/who-we-are/the-reverend-martin-luther-king-jr.htm
-----------------
cf. the following passage from Overloading Australia : How governments
and media dither and deny on population, by Mark O'Connor and William
Lines
As their concern for social justice supplanted their concern for
the way population-growth degrades environments, so the Greens
increased their vote – but chiefly among an elite segment of the
electorate: the most highly educated.
The result is that the party’s principles on human rights and
justice now eclipse those three basic principles of conservation
– that nature has intrinsic worth, does not exist for human
consumption and cannot be compromised – that motivated the
movement out of which the Greens formed.
Yet the Greens’ population-blindness undercuts even their
concern for social justice. Compare their fear of being accused
of ‘insensitivity’ towards some minority with the bold clarity of
Martin Luther King Jr:
Unlike the plagues of the dark ages, or contemporary diseases which
we do not yet understand, the modern plague of overpopulation
is solvable with means we have discovered and with resources we
possess. What is lacking is not sufficient knowledge of the solution,
but universal consciousness of the gravity of the problem and the
education of the billions who are its victims.” – Speech, 5 May 1966
Perhaps it is a little safer (as some Greens point out) to talk
like that when you have triple-A ‘minority status’ yourself; but
what a sad excuse this would be for selling short your own stated
principles!