Latino Leaders Speak, Seen At a Book Festival

Who’s Next? Leaders Learn As They Grow

Review: Mickey Ibarra and María Pérez-Brown, eds. Latino Leaders Speak, Vol. II. Personal Stories of Struggle and Triumph. Houston: Arte Publico Press, 2025. ISBN: 979-8-89375-025-6

Michael Sedano

What do you get when people on upward career trajectories gather to listen to a speech given by someone of notable achievement talk about themselves and how they got to the top? If you do so regularly you get a collection of speeches like Mickey Ibarra and María Pérez-Brown’s collection, Latino Leaders Speak, from Houston’s Arte Publico Press (link).

 

The collection of twenty-five speeches aren’t oratory but communal, comfortable discourse of an achiever among peers, gente who come from ranks of elected officials, policy makers, corporate executives, opinion leaders, community activists, industry experts, and political insiders.

The collection will be useful to young adult readers on the verge of making career decisions. It’s not that any kid aims to become president of San Diego State University, or Governor of New Mexico, or a White House Deputy Chief of Staff, but somewhere between ninth grade and the first job out of college, those people found the right way to get there. 

 

A collection of talks like this, successful raza at pinnacles of authority and comfort, give readers insight into lifelong habits and career strategies to emulate or reject. Some of the speakers come from farm labor, others from middle-class comfort. Common consejos and observations emerge from the readings: leaders like these found within themselves the ganas to take risks, depend on mentors, didn’t forget familia and where they’re from. The preacher calls out the vital importance of public speaking to a leader’s abilities, a skill each of the other keynoters should have credited as well. 

This collection emerges from collaboration between Arte Publico and Latino Leaders Network (link) https://www.latinoleadersnetwork.org The 20 year-old nonprofit dedicates itself to networking among diverse business professionals in various cities via luncheons, awards, and other networking events. Latino Leaders Speak comes from luncheons between 2009 and 2024.

Useful as this collection appears, it’s flawed by the absence of women. Among the 25 luncheon honorees who make it into the book, only three women make the list. Theirs are among the most effective readings in the collection, more’s the loss.

Coincidentally, the first essay comes from California gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra (the collection is alphabetized), whose 2009 speech pays tribute to the first Chicano elected to Congress, Esteban Torres. The speech establishes Becerra’s ethos as a respectful, humble, loving father who cares about healthcare and immigrants. Not a bad campaign ad for the rising-in-the-polls Chicano.

While the book’s emphasis is political and elected leadership, there’s also Raiders coach Tom Flores, musician Emilio Estefan, actors Tony Plana and Edward James Olmos, and community activist Rev. Luis Cortés, Jr.

You can order copies from Libromobile, your local indie bookseller, or Arte Publico. Volume I in the series is free via Latino Leaders Network's website.

Scenes From The 2026 Los Angeles Times Festival of Books 

Surface rail from Pasadena to the University of Southern California makes travel a breeze. At 35 cents for seniors, it's also a travel bargain that can't be beat. Those centavitos we save on transportation come in handy when a vendor charges siete bolas for an agua fresca. 

The Times runs a razacentric section it calls De Los (link). It's the festival's first stage and book display area, just where the crowd enters campus. It's a prime spot for foot traffic and that's what's happening.

A mariachi group takes the stage. These are high school students from South Gate, a working class community. Little kids filter out from the audience to sit at the foot of the stage to soak in the cultura from musicians not too much older than the attentive chamacos. It's heart-warming and invigorating seeing these young people in fancy traje I hope the school provides, playing and singing solos. Ajua!

I'm with Thelma Reyna and as we enter the bookseller area we spot Reyna Grande's new book. Thelma tells me she's seen Grande's social media spots where Reyna is sewing a glorious jacket mirroring the book jacket. "Isn't that Reyna?" Thelma says. Sure enough, the brilliant yellow jacket and matching hat can't be missed.

Or, maybe not. Reyna Grande stands back from the display where readers stare at the yellow flowered cover of Migrant Heart (link), unaware the woman standing behind them is the author wearing her textile rendering of la portada of Migrant Heart, Essays About Things I Can't Forget. 

I imagine it's a typical occurrence at book fairs, authors mixing with readers free from trappings of celebrity.

2016 Pura Belpré Award Speeches

The Pura Belpré Award was established in 1996 and honors Latino writers and illustrators whose works of art best portray, affirm and celebrate the Latino cultural experience in a book for children. It is named for the first Latina librarian who distinguished herself for her storytelling and outreach work with children and their families while working for the New York Public Library during the first decade of the twentieth century.

To read the complete speeches visit,

http://www.ala.org/alsc/sites/ala.org.alsc/files/content/awardsgrants/bookmedia/belpremedal/belpre-speeches-2016.pdf

Los Ganadores

Margarita Engle received the 2016 Pura Belpré Author Award for Enchanted Air: Two Cultures, Two Wings: A Memoir (Atheneum/Simon & Schuster).

Thank you! Gracias, y gracias a Dios! I am so incredibly grateful to the Pura Belpré committee, REFORMA, ALSC, my editor Reka Simonsen, Justin Chanda, Candace Greene McManus, Michelle Leo, illustrator Edel Rodríguez, and everyone at Atheneum/Simon & Schuster.

I’ve written many historical novels, but writing non-fiction about my own life was terrifying. Some of the memories were joyful, but others were excruciating. I chose to focus on travel, those childhood summers with the extended family in Cuba. I decided that free verse would allow me to transform the past into present tense, bringing childhood emotions back to life, and softening the blow of history with the rhythmic comforts of language. Even though this book was written at a time when there was no public glimmer of hope for renewed relations between Cuba and the U.S., I wanted it to be read as a story about hope.

*

David Bowles received the 2016 Pura Belpré Author Honor for The Smoking Mirror (IFWG).

The 2016 Author Honor Book Award... ¡qué emoción! Thanks to the Pura Belpré Award committee, REFORMA and ALSC, as well as to Gerry Huntman and the rest of the team at IFWG for believing in the Garza Twins and their romp through Mesoamerican mythology. I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention the unending support of my wife Angélica and our three children—Helene, Charlene, and Angelo.

Of course, the people I really owe a debt of gratitude are librarians in general. Sure, I learned my love of leyendas y cuentos at the knee of my Grandmother Garza, in my tías’ kitchens, on my tío’s ranch, from my father’s bedtime tales. But it was librarians who took my hunger for story and transformed it into literacy, guiding me through the stacks to books they knew would bridge the gap between my family’s working class lore and the widened vistas reading could afford me.

*

Meg Medina received the 2016 Pura Belpré Author Honor for Mango, Abuela, and Me (Candlewick), illustrated by Angela Dominguez.

Thank you, everyone.

It’s such a pleasure to be here with you all on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the Pura Belpré Award. I want to thank the 2016 committee for selecting Mango, Abuela, and Me as an Honor Book, especially during this very symbolic and important year for this award. I’m grateful to the Pura Belpré committee members—this year’s group and the volunteers from every year prior—for having been so generous with their time and expertise, and for having the sheer grit to insist on an award that celebrates the Latino experience in the US.

This is and always will be a most meaningful award for those of us who receive it. At least, it is that way for me. It has been earned by some of my literary heroes and is an affirmation of who we are in the deepest and most personal way. It is an award that celebrates roots, loss, and the gaining of a new identity. It is also an award that I believe has opened doors for so many of our voices to be heard in classrooms and libraries across the country.

*

Rafael López received the 2016 Pura Belpré Illustrator Award for Drum Dream Girl: How One Girl’s Courage Changed Music (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).

Back in the mid-1950s, a young woman secretly enrolled in the UNAM School of Architecture in Mexico City. She joined the first generation that moved into the brand-new modern campus. A big deal! 293 male students and only seven women enrolled that year pretty shocking numbers! But that didn’t seem to bother her. Ever since she was a child, she had always wanted to build things for other people. She loved building for her younger sisters, too. As a fourteen-year-old, she didn’t hesitate to test drive the small wooden plane she put together with an old thin bucket and some pieces of lumber for wings, confidently pushing her younger sister Carmen off the rooftop of their house for a test flight, with very predictable consequences. Thankfully, Carmen survived and the unexpected results didn’t deter the young builder from continuing to build things.

And build she did: models of dreamy houses, impossibly tall circus tents, castles and caves and fantasy cities made of balsa wood and cardboard that she shared with her sisters and friends.

*

Antonio Castro L. received a 2016 Pura Belpré Illustrator Honor for My Tata’s Remedies = Los remedios de mi tata (Cinco Puntos), written by Roni Capin Rivera- Ashford.

When Cinco Puntos offered me the chance to illustrate My Tata’s Remedies, I was excited because my own grandmother used traditional medicine. If my legs ached, Abuela would wrap them with herbs soaked in rubbing alcohol. Actually, one of the herbs she used was marijuana! Tata’s story also made me remember my grandmother’s home, which was marked by warm hospitality. I reflected on those things as I was illustrating, trying with each image to show the love and generosity that are such a part of our Mexican culture. It was a rich pleasure to illustrate this book. Imagine my delight to be doubly rewarded with the Pura Belpré award!

I am honored to accept this award and thankful to the members of the Pura Belpré committee for giving it to me. I am also grateful to Lee, Bobby and John Byrd of Cinco Puntos Press for asking me to illustrate My Tata’s Remedies and to Roni Capin Rivera- Ashford for writing this wonderful story of a grandfather’s love for his grandson.

*

Angela Dominguez received a 2016 Pura Belpré Illustrator Honor for Mango, Abuela, and Me (Candlewick), written by Meg Medina.

Hello, Everyone!

I’m so happy to be here today. I’m delighted to be here among friends, colleagues, and my family. I know my family is especially happy to be here because tomorrow we are going to see Harry Potter and then Disney World later on in the week.

In all sincerity, this is incredible. I can’t believe I’m up here again about to receive my second Pura Belpré Honor.

When I received the honor for Maria Had A Little Llama, it really did change my life. It gave me that extra validation I needed to leave San Francisco and move to New York to be closer to the center of publishing.

*

Duncan Tonatiuh received a 2016 Pura Belpré Illustrator Honor for Funny Bones: Posada and His Day of the Dead Calaveras (Abrams).

Good afternoon. It is great to be here. I want to thank Ana-Elba Pavon and the committee for this honor. And I wish to congratulate the Pura Belpré, and all the people who make it possible, on its 20th anniversary. I greatly appreciate and I am very proud that my books have been consistently recognized by the award.

I want to congratulate my fellow authors and illustrators. I am happy that I have been able to spend time with several of you. You are not only my colleagues, you are my friends. I feel fortunate to be a part of this supportive, creative, and strong community.

I want to thank Abrams for making this book possible: Howard, my editor, who continuously publishes quality multicultural literature; Maria, who did an excellent job with the typography and design of the book; Jason, who is always working and making sure the book gets into the right hands; and the Abrams team as a whole, who have always been supportive of my work and have always made me feel welcomed.

2015 Pura Belpré Award Speeches

The Pura Belpré Award was established in 1996 and honors Latino writers and illustrators whose works of art best portray, affirm and celebrate the Latino cultural experience in a book for children. It is named for the first Latina librarian who distinguished herself for her storytelling and outreach work with children and their families while working for the New York Public Library during the first decade of the twentieth century.

To read the complete speeches visit,

http://www.ala.org/alsc/sites/ala.org.alsc/files/content/awardsgrants/bookmedia/belpremedal/belpre-2015-speeches-lores_final.pdf

Los Ganadores

Picture cortesía de Oralia Garza de Córtes

Marjorie Agosín received the 2015 Pura Belpré Author Award for I Lived on Butterfly Hill, illustrated by Lee White (Atheneum/Simon & Schuster).

“Abuela Frida used to say that there are no coincidences and that the universe weaves its luminous magic. I am honored to be here and to receive the Pura Belpré award in Valparaíso sister city, San Francisco—where the hills are as whimsical as the ones of Valparaíso and where elegant cable cars run up and down this welcoming and beautiful metropolis. I am sure Celeste Marconi would have found joy wandering the many hills of San Francisco and getting lost in its mist and fog.”

*

Juan Felipe Herrera received the 2015 Pura Belpré Author Honor for Portraits of Hispanic American Heroes illustrated by Raúl Colón (Dial /Penguin).

“Let me thank the heroes who are in-between the colors and lines of Portraits of Hispanic American Heroes. First of all, the Pura Belpré Award Committee, Lucia Monfried, tireless and generous editor of Dial books for young audiences, also REFORMA who cosponsored the award with ALSC, Kendra Marcus, my patient agent, Raúl Colón, a genius artist, who with his multiple layers of hues called on the unique spirit of every countenance, and, without doubt, Margarita Robles, my partner, for her guidance and boundless support, my son, Joshua, who examined every line. I am honored to receive the 2015 Author Honor Book Award.”

*

Yuyi Morales received the 2015 Pura Belpré Illustrator Award for Viva Frida (Neal Porter/Roaring Brook).

“I want to congratulate you. I don’t know if you have heard, but you won the 2015 Pura Belpré Award. You did! And we are here to celebrate it. Certainly my fellow authors and illustrators and I are the ones who get to climb the podium and get our pictures taken, and we even give the speeches, but we are just a little part of what you all have created. You are the ones who have been suggesting, insisting, demanding a more diverse body of children’s literature. You are the Oralias and Sandras of this world, who could take it no more when the only multicultural books you found on shelves were riddled with inaccuracies and stereotypes, and who worked hard to establish awards like this with the mission to see cultural truths flourish. It has been you who asked that in books we find the voices that are seldom heard. It has been you who shared books such as the ones we are recognizing today, not only with passion but also with orgullo, with pride."

*

Susan Guevara received a 2015 Pura Belpré Illustrator Honor for Little Roja Riding Hood, written by Susan Middleton Elya (GP Putnam’s Sons/Penguin).

"Thank you to the Pura Belpré Committee for this important recognition for illustrating Little Roja Riding Hood. It reminds me of what you taught me many years ago; you showed me the responsibility I have as a bookmaker to be completely honest and unflinching in drawing what I know to be true. Thank you too, to my agent, Kendra Marcus, for suggesting to Putnam that I be the illustrator for Susan Elya’s Little Roja Riding Hood. Thank you, Susan Elya, for your fine sensibilities with rhyme and Spanglish. The wacky unpredictable word, “Telenovelas” gave Little Roja’s Abuela her romance-writing career."

*

John Parra received a 2015 Pura Belpré Illustrator Honor for Green Is a Chile Pepper: A Book of Colors, written by Roseanne Greenfield Thong (Chronicle).

"Colors are everywhere! They are image. They are emotion. They are energy. Color is diversity. Color is life. Color is sacred. I see colors celebrated in countless stories and poems about glorious sunsets and striking far off landscapes. They are the kaleidoscope of vegetables, fruits, and spices, as bountiful flavors are prepared and cooked in Abuela’s kitchen. They are seen splashed about in an infinite array of painted murals as directed from an artist’s creative eye. They are the vibrancy of piñatas, ribbons, and banners at children’s birthday parties. They are the details in the costumes worn by performers at Folklorico dances. They are the whispered, tender words of love used to describe a companion’s eyes, skin, and hair. They are felt, through music, ideas, and memories. They are for all peoples and backgrounds. Color is everywhere...and I love color!"

*

Duncan Tonatiuh received a 2015 Pura Belpré Illustrator Honor for Separate Is Never Equal: Sylvia Mendez & Her Family’s Fight for Desegregation (Abrams).

MLK answered Obama about Tucson

With Martin Luther King Day approaching, and the Tucson shooting and its aftermath in the news, I thought it appropriate to provide La Bloga readers with excerpts of President Obama's Tucson speech to compare to MLK's "A Call to Conscience."

Note that, while the times have changed, the wars and enemies have different names, what the two men speak to hasn't. I leave it to readers to make your own connections and draw your own conclusions.
RudyG

Barack Obama, 1/12/11
at a Memorial Service for the Victims of the Shooting in Tucson, Ariz.

There is nothing I can say that will fill the sudden hole torn in your hearts. But know this: The hopes of a nation are here tonight. We mourn with you for the fallen. We join you in your grief. And we add our faith to yours that Representative Gabrielle Giffords and the other living victims of this tragedy will pull through.

These men and women remind us that heroism is found not only on the fields of battle. They remind us that heroism does not require special training or physical strength. Heroism is here, in the hearts of so many of our fellow citizens, all around us, just waiting to be summoned -– as it was on Saturday morning. Their actions, their selflessness poses a challenge to each of us. It raises a question of what, beyond prayers and expressions of concern, is required of us going forward. How can we honor the fallen? How can we be true to their memory?

[A]t a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized -– at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who happen to think differently than we do -– it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we’re talking with each other in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds.

Bad things happen, and we have to guard against simple explanations in the aftermath. For the truth is none of us can know exactly what triggered this vicious attack. None of us can know with any certainty what might have stopped these shots from being fired, or what thoughts lurked in the inner recesses of a violent man’s mind. Yes, we have to examine all the facts behind this tragedy. We cannot and will not be passive in the face of such violence. We should be willing to challenge old assumptions in order to lessen the prospects of such violence in the future.

As we discuss these issues, let each of us do so with a good dose of humility. Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let’s use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy and remind ourselves of all the ways that our hopes and dreams are bound together.

Perhaps we question whether we're doing right by our children, or our community, whether our priorities are in order.

We recognize our own mortality, and we are reminded that in the fleeting time we have on this Earth, what matters is not wealth, or status, or power, or fame -– but rather, how well we have loved -- (applause)-- and what small part we have played in making the lives of other people better.

And that process -- that process of reflection, of making sure we align our values with our actions –- that, I believe, is what a tragedy like this requires.


The loss of these wonderful people should make every one of us strive to be better. To be better in our private lives, to be better friends and neighbors and coworkers and parents. And if, as has been discussed in recent days, their death helps usher in more civility in our public discourse, let us remember it is not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy -- it did not -- but rather because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to the challenges of our nation in a way that would make them proud.

They believed -- they believed, and I believe that we can be better. Those who died here, those who saved life here –- they help me believe. We may not be able to stop all evil in the world, but I know that how we treat one another, that’s entirely up to us.

And I believe that for all our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us.

I want to live up to her expectations. I want our democracy to be as good as Christina imagined it. I want America to be as good as she imagined it. All of us -– we should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children’s expectations.

May God bless and keep those we’ve lost in restful and eternal peace. May He love and watch over the survivors. And may He bless the United States of America.
_________________________

MLK {& Vincent Harding]
Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence
Delivered 4 April 1967, Riverside Church, New York City

I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. The recent statements of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart, and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: "A time comes when silence is betrayal."

Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world.

And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.

Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: "Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King?" "Why are you joining the voices of dissent?" "Peace and civil rights don't mix," they say. "Aren't you hurting the cause of your people," they ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live.

There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated, as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So, I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.

My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettoes of the North over the last three years -- especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they ask -- and rightly so -- what about Vietnam? They ask if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. 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.

Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read: Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be -- are -- are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.

This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I'm speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that 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? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the One who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? What then can I say to the Vietcong or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this One? Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life?

This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation's self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation and for those it calls "enemy," for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.

The only change came from America, as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept, and without popular support. All the while the people read our leaflets and received the regular promises of peace and democracy and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us, not their fellow Vietnamese, the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move on or be destroyed by our bombs.

So they go, primarily women and children and the aged. They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one Vietcong-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them, mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.

We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We have cooperated in the crushing -- in the crushing of the nation's only non-Communist revolutionary political force, the unified Buddhist Church. We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men.

Now there is little left to build on, save bitterness. Soon, the only solid -- solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call "fortified hamlets." The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these. Could we blame them for such thoughts? We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise.

At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless in Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called "enemy," I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and 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.

Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak of the -- for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours.

If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately, 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. The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways. In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war.

[W]e in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. We must continue to raise our voices and our lives if our nation persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative method of protest possible.

These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.

The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality...and if we ignore this sobering reality, we will find ourselves organizing "clergy and laymen concerned" committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala -- Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end, unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy.

It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin...we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

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.

A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences 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.

We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. And history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate.

We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

And if we will only make the right choice, we will be able to transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of peace. If we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. If we will but make the right choice, we will be able to speed up the day, all over America and all over the world, when "justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."

[You can read the full text of MLK speech by going clicking here.]