I haven't been to the mountaintop - not yet, anyway. But January is here - the month of Martin's federally honored birthday and my far less significant date of birth.

So once again, the question looms larger for me than at any other time of the year: If he were alive today, what aspect of contemporary reality would Martin engage with "truth-force," what Gandhi called satyagraha?

On Sept. 27, 1960, the King-led Southern Christian Leadership Council opened its annual convention in Nashville, Tenn. With the success of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and other nonviolent campaigns in the Deep South informing their thoughts, SCLC leaders began to further develop Gandhi's theory and practice of nonviolent social action.

"The possibilities of development of a South-wide mass movement are tremendous," civil rights strategist Wyatt Walker told the SCLC board. King agreed with Walker and added, "We intend to do even more in the area of direct action than we have done in the past," with the plan being the recruitment of a 10,000-person "nonviolent army" - "individuals ready to oppose segregation with their bodies and willing to endure lengthy jail stays," writes David J. Garrow in his Pulitzer Prize-winning King biography "Bearing the Cross."

In David Levering Lewis' "King: A Biography," we're reminded that, "in the years to come, nonviolence would win tens of thousands of adherents, most of them convinced of its tactical superiority. For Martin and his associates, and a far smaller number of nonviolent practitioners, more than tactics was involved. Nonviolent passive resistance was not merely a viable technique but the sole authentic approach to the problem of social injustice."

Question: If we are truly a peaceful nation, why don't we, as a matter of policy, refine and advance the "nonviolent army" concept, training in nonviolent methods of conflict, instead of being the world's leading arms supplier and foremost art-of-war teacher?

Toward the end of his life, King began to see that racism was only one form of oppression afflicting the poor across the globe, inextricably linked to militarism and economic imperialism. Besides publicly expressing concern about U.S. involvement in Vietnam, King spoke out against what he called the "most colossal of all evils" - the organization of war and the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

"It is no longer a choice, my friends, between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence, and the alternative to disarmament, the alternative to a greater suspension of nuclear tests, the alternative to strengthening the United Nations and thereby disarming the whole world may well be a civilization plunged into the abyss of annihilation, and our earthly habitat would be transformed into an inferno that even the mind of Dante could not imagine," King said, preaching his last Sunday sermon in Washington National Cathedral on March 31, 1968 - a week before he was killed.

Now, fast forward to Jan. 15, 2001. As they did last year, a group of courageous souls will be out in front of Naval Submarine Base Bangor, just 20 miles from downtown Seattle. The demonstrators will be mostly folks from the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action and other affiliated nonviolent warriors. Protests like this are going on all over the country.

Among them will be activist and Local 46 IBEW electrician Glen Milner. I spoke to him last week.

"Ultimately, the violence of Trident (nuclear weapon system) goes beyond our comprehension and strikes at the heart of civil society. Trident is the end of the world. How do we live at the end of the world? As Dr. King has shown us, we must begin anew.

"The thought of one atomic bomb for one minute is the beginning of understanding," he told me. "But, one Trident submarine carries the net explosive force of over 1,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs. Our reflection of Trident now extends to 16 hours and 40 minutes with the inferno of Hiroshima recurring on each and every minute. Can we comprehend the violence that is Trident?

"Our reflection, however, is not enough. There are 17 submarines in service. An 18th submarine, the USS Alaska, is currently at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard undergoing modifications for the larger D-5 missile. $6.5 billion will be spent to convert this submarine and three others."

Remembering King's "dream" is fine. Doing the actual dream work is something all together different.

Just ask our brothers and sisters at Ground Zero (www.gzcenter.org).

Sean Gonsalves is a Cape Cod Times staff writer and syndicated columinist.

Copyright © 2001 Cape Cod Times

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