ONLINE: Dr. King's Riverside Speech

media release: Register here for Zoom. The event will be will also be live streamed on Wisdom Wisconsin | Facebook.

Clergy and people of faith across Wisconsin will gather on Zoom on April 4 to commemorate the 55^th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s powerful and prescient “Beyond Vietnam’ speech with a virtual Read-In. The Read-In will also be livestreamed on WISDOM’s Facebook page.

Representing Jewish, Christian, Sikh, Unitarian, and Buddhist faiths, clergy, high school and college students, Black, white, Latinx, gay, straight, and trans, all will come together to read the speech collaboratively. 

Dr. King’s speech against the U.S. military intervention in Vietnam was seen at the time as a radical departure from his work for civil rights and was widely denounced, even by his own Southern Christian Leadership Conference.  Yet, his words were prophetic, and still resonate today, as Dr. King called upon us all, as a nation, to undergo a ‘radical revolution of values’. He further warned us, “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.”

“These words were spoken 55 years ago, but they are as relevant today as they were then” said Rabbi Bonnie Margulis, Executive Director of Wisconsin Faith Voices for Justice, one of the sponsors of the event. “With growing economic inequality, corporations and CEOs reaping enormous profits while their workers struggle to feed and house their families, the forces of racism and white supremacy seeking to bring us back to the days of Jim Crow, we need more than ever to hear and heed Dr. King’s words. The issues he addressed speak to the same issues of white supremacy and racism that we are fighting. We are today, just as we were 55 years ago, ‘confronted with the fierce urgency of now.’”

Speakers (Congregations/organizations listed for identification only)

Peter Bakken, Wisconsin Council of Churches, Madison

Rev. Karla Renee Garcia, SS Morris AME Community Church, Madison

Rev. Ben Morris, Lutheran Campus Ministries, LaCrosse

Rev. Kelly Asprooth-Jackson - First Unitarian Society, Madison

Jane Kavaloski – WCC Stewardship of Public Life Commission, Madison

Sister Maureen McDonnell, O.P. - Dominican Sisters of Sinsinawa, Madison

Adam Clausen -  Life Center Madison

Rev. Jerry Folk – Interfaith Peace Working Group, Madison

Robbie Gunshor - junior at Madison West High School, Madison

Madelyn Peppard – UW Madison/PresHouse, Madison

Rev. Walter Baires, Assistant to the Bishop, ELCA, Madison

Lisa Jones, MICAH, Milwaukee

Bishop Paul Erickson – ELCA, Milwaukee

Rev. Walter Lanier – MICAH, Milwaukee

Rev. Joseph Jackson – MICAH, Milwaukee

Pardeep Kaleka – Interfaith Conference of Greater Milwaukee,      Milwaukee

Rabbi Steve Adams - WI Council of Rabbis, Milwaukee

Jodi de Fosse - Black Lives are Sacred, Milwaukee

Taylor Staples – Zao Milwaukee Church, Milwaukee

Rev. Joy Gallmon – Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church, Milwaukee

Susan Myoyu Andersen – Great Plains Zen Center, Monroe

The Read-In is co-sponsored by MICAH, Wisconsin Council of Churches, the Wisconsin Council of Rabbis, Wisconsin Faith Voices for Justice, and WISDOM.