Where Do We Go from Here?

Crossroads Questions for Movement Making

In what would end up being his last book, Martin Luther King, Jr. reflects on his decades long movement work toward racial, economic, and decolonial justice guided by the question: “where do we go from here, chaos or community?”  Like many of us, King found himself at this crossroads question at moment when it was becoming apparent how much deeper the work would need to go to create genuine transformation of individuals and society, even after hard-fought wins like the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act.  He begins the book remembering the day that President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law, noting that as he writes 2 years later, the initial hope it brought had not come to fruition.  And in fact, discrimination and violence continued, fueled by a powerful “white backlash.”

As a nation, we are navigating similar waters, at the crossroads where some hopeful and powerful movement strides have been made toward racial justice, while we face growing and effective backlash movements.  This month, Dr. Renee Harrison offers a video exploring what King’s responses to this crucial question might have to offer us as we face the days ahead.  Rooted in human dignity, economic repair, and a rejection of imperialist violence, King offered up a vision of grassroots organizing and beloved community-making as a guiding star for just such days as these.

And I must confess, my friends, that the road ahead will not always be smooth. There will still be rocky places of frustration and meandering points of bewilderment. There will be inevitable setbacks here and there. And there will be those moments when the buoyancy of hope will be transformed into the fatigue of despair. Our dreams will sometimes be shattered and our ethereal hopes blasted. We may again, with tear-drenched eyes, have to stand before the bier of some courageous civil rights worker whose life will be snuffed out by the dastardly acts of bloodthirsty mobs. But difficult and painful as it is, we must walk on in the days ahead with an audacious faith in the future. 

– from King’s 1967 speech to SCLC annual gathering by the same title “Where Do We Go from Here?”

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