Today in History the Great Non-Violent Rebel, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was Assassinated. In 1967 He Explained, "The Greatest Purveyor of Violence in the World Today [is] My Own Government"

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From [EJI] On April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed while standing on a hotel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee. Dr. King was in the city to speak on his growing Poor People's Campaign, and to support an economic protest by Black sanitation workers.

About two months earlier, 1,300 African American Memphis sanitation workers began a strike to protest low pay and poor treatment. When city leaders largely ignored the strike and refused to negotiate, the workers sought assistance from civil rights leaders, including Dr. King. He enthusiastically agreed to help and, on March 18, visited the city to speak to a crowd of more than 15,000 people.

Dr. King also planned a march of support. When the first attempt was violently suppressed by police, leaving one protestor dead, Dr. King resolved to stage another peaceful march on April 8. He returned to Memphis by plane on April 3, braving a bomb threat on his scheduled flight. Once in Memphis, he stayed at the Lorraine Motel and gave a short speech reflecting on his own mortality.

The next evening, April 4, Dr. King was shot as he stepped out onto the motel balcony. He was rushed to nearby St. Joseph's Hospital and pronounced dead at 7:05 pm, leaving a nation in shock and sparking mournful uprisings in more than 100 cities across the country. Just 39 years old, Dr. King left behind a wife, Coretta Scott King, and four young children. James Earl Ray, a white man, was later convicted of his assassination.

According to FUNKTIONARY:

rebel – one who lives authentically in the present, spontaneously responding to life according to the dictates of his/her inner voice and undivided intent and unrelenting will. Rebellion is unorganized, autonomous and individualistic. Wherever there is organized rebellion, it is no longer rebellion but rather revolution planned by revolutionaries—for in the very organization, the rebellion and the rebel both die. Revolution is a social phenomenon; rebellion is meditative. Lao Tzu was a rebel; Confucius and Karl Marx were not rebels. Martin Luther was purely a cunning politician fronting as a rebel, joining vested interests after creating a rift in Christianity. He was protesting the power of the Pope, not so that power should be distributed, but that he should be given the power. The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on the other hand, was a non-violent rebel. The philosophy of a rebel is always that of decentralization of power, and is the acid test of the true nature of a rebellion. A rebel is one who would rather live in hell along with those who are Alive authentically living their own reality than to be in heaven with those thinking they hold and know the truth—vicariously living. If your mama or daddy taught you well, you wouldn’t conform, assimilate, or shirk, you’d raise your frequency, change the channel and rebel. For a rebel, its space is always here, and its time is always now. To a rebel, the past is an unnecessary burden—one need not carry it. (See: Authenticity, Presence, Selt-Realization, Protestant, Pope, The Reformation, Revolution, Religion, Ideology, Ego, Mass, Class, Collective, Assimilation, Conformity & Rebellion)

"Authority-" is not a force but a farce! "Every great advancement in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority." —Aldous Huxley. Government is the hefty price we pay for our lack of being further evolved as humans. "The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching consequence of submission to authority." —Stanley Milgram Regarding obedience to authority and carrying out "orders" Milgram states, "Thus there is a fragmentation of the totai human act; no one man decides to carry out the evil act and is confronted with consequences. The person who assumes full responsibility for the act has evaporated. Perhaps this is the most common characteristic of socially organized evil in modern society." At its root, government is based on violence and coercion. Without violent authority, studies show that violent behavior will all but disappear in its wake. Authority breeds the violence that it combats and perpetuates. Violence perpetrated by individuals is learned through noxious social experiences typically suffered under some assumed "authority." "The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today [is] my own government." —Dr. Martin L. King. Jr.. 1967. Read "Obedience to Authority" by Stanley Milgram, and "Constitution of No Authority" by Lysander Spooner. (See: Violence, Government. Yurugu, BOG. "The Law," Hierarchy. Obedience, Duty, Defiance, Disobedience, Compliance Priests, Preachers, Citizens, States, Involuntary Taxation, Tax Invasion, Behavior, Orders, Allegiance. Internal Revenue Service, Corporate State, Anarchy. Taxtortion, Power, Experts, Doggy & Neuropeans) [MORE]