On Monday, legendary singer-songwriter Stevie Marvel launched a video commemorating this yr’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The musician-activist’s total message was that the “universe” is profoundly “pissed” off at us for doing the alternative of reaching the fallen civil-rights chief’s imaginative and prescient of a simply society.
Early on within the four-minute video, posted to Twitter on MLK Day, Marvel needs Dr. King a “pleased birthday,” earlier than recounting: “Forty years in the past at the moment, I used to be marching within the chilly and snowy streets of Washington, D.C., the place 1000’s of individuals all believed in the suitable and the facility to persuade Congress that this nationwide vacation was wanted — not simply to honor this man of peace, however to honor the precept of peace and unity.” Marvel provides: “Forty years in the past, we marched, after which we peacefully entered the Capitol to discover methods to achieve throughout the aisle.”
Marvel, who has repeatedly denounced candidate after which president Donald Trump over time, gave the impression to be emphasizing the phrase “peacefully,” in an effort to explicitly differentiate that kind of nonviolent activism from the Trump-inspired rioting on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Nevertheless, for a lot of the rest of his video message, Marvel’s message turns much less sanguine.
“Forty years, what have we performed for the planet? How have we actually helped one another? The place has poverty been eradicated, why are weapons nonetheless protected, and why has hate been elevated? In truth, we’ve performed little or no in 40 years,” Marvel says. “Now it’s time for us to develop the [fuck] up, and get out of our digital delusions that promote homicide, mayhem, terrorism, and hate…Dr. King, I want I might say you had been right here. However it seems like we didn’t deserve you then, and we’re not a lot better now.”
He provides: “And other people, I consider deep in my soul the universe is watching us — and she or he is pissed. However will we repair it? I hope so.”
Marvel’s decades-long report of social and political activism has been acknowledged each in the US and overseas. The United Nations has acknowledged his work over time, and the group writes that Marvel’s “activism has been pivotal in U.S. and world occasions. In 1983, he spearheaded a marketing campaign to make Martin Luther King Day a nationwide vacation in the US. He additionally advocated for the top of apartheid in South Africa.”