Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (King Legacy) Paperback – Illustrated, January 1, 2010

This book -- and by extension, its author -- SO FAR AHEAD OF ITS TIME.I was inspired to read it after visiting the Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta, GA. There, I learned that Dr. King was so much more than the flat, watered-down version presented in my high school history books. He was a real man with profound thoughts, agonizing feelings, and boundless hope. He was almost certainly a genius as well as a humanitarian, gifted speaker and eloquent writer. I learned so much from this book.Dr. King almost effortlessly makes an airtight case for civil rights, knocking down excuse after persistent excuse about why we should not be involved and just let things "happen." He says (I'm paraphrasing) that no one's rights are GIVEN to them, they must DEMAND their rights. And if history tells us anything, that is 100% true -- not just for black people, but for women, LGBT people, disabled people and so on.Something else I loved was his uncompromising position on nonviolent resistance. I grow increasingly concerned every time I hear people say that rioting is an acceptable form of protest, when it results in injury, death, and the destruction of people's livelihood. I long ago committed myself to nonviolence, but I have felt increasing pressure from my fellow activists to accept rioting as a legitimate form of protest. Reading Dr. King's work was a great assurance that there are nonviolent ways to achieve racial reconciliation. I lost track of how many times I highlighted in this book.The only thing I have an issue with is how he proposes to deal with education. I taught in a mostly-black school so I absolutely understand his underlying point that black kids too often do not receive a quality education. However, he puts the blame on teachers, saying that they don't know how to teach and that a child's home environment shouldn't matter. I beg to differ that this is the case. I could cite studies to prove my point, but I would rather quote my actual students complaining of hunger, lack of sleep, feeling like they are not safe at home, etc. as reasons why they have trouble in school. If we are going to solve the problem of unequal education, we must also solve the problem of poverty. There is simply no other way around it. Children can't concentrate when they are hungry, homeless, or getting beat up at home. We have got to make the "war on poverty" a priority if we want to see lasting changes.At any rate, I highly recommend this book, especially to my white friends!

Incredible, the wisdom of this man, and amazing that it is so pertinent to times today. Get it, read it. You'll be wiser for it.

This is an amazing and important book, out of print for much too long. It is an impassioned and urgent call to heal. Because it was written in the 1960's it is really two books. Part of the book is of important and historical interest. This involves Dr. King's take on what was going on in the country.But the other part of the book is Dr. King's rallying cry of "Where do we go from here?" There are so many thoughts I could lift from the book to share. But given the space, here are just a few:"Together we must learn to live as brothers or together we will be forced to perish as fools." Dr. King goes on to add, "The question now is, do we have the morality and courage required to live together as brothers and not be afraid?"Dr. King was clearly seeing our drift towards chaos, and just as clearly was warning us that we must move towards community or perish. This is an even more urgent book today as it was in the 1960's. It is a book not only to read but refer back to, over an over. My sermon yesterday was on our propensity to divide ourselves into "us" and "them." Dr. King was a great believer in "us" - and far more eloquent than I can ever hope to be on the subject. Dr. King's point was that if we cannot find our common humanity, we must and will perish. In the end, there is no "them." There is only "us."

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I recommend that anyone, who still believes that the late, great Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was only a "dreamer" and an "integrationist", and not a creative, strategic thinker, and genuine radical and revolutionary, in the image and spirit of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, Marcus Garvey, and others, purchase, from Amazon.com, and then read, re-read, and think deeply about, "Where Do We Go From Here: Community or Chaos".Since his assassination on April 4, 1968, most Americans, Black and White, have fond memories of Dr. King's famous "I Have A Dream" speech, which was the highlight of the August, 1963, March on Washington and rally at the Lincoln Memorial.While no one can deny the greatness of that historic speech, what most people don't know is that, a few years later, Dr. King repudiated his "I Have A Speech Dream" speech as hopelessly naive because, at that time, he did not realize that America's "individualism, militarism, and racism" was tantamount to a "nightmare", deeply embedded in the fabric of American culture, politics, economic and social policy.After the March on Washington, and the "I Have A Dream" speech, King and the Civil Rights movement, aided and abetted by the commitment, political courage and leadership of President, Lyndon Baines Johnson, scored powerful victories with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965.But, almost concurrent with these historic legislative victories, urban ghettos exploded in riots, in 1964 and 1965, demonstrating to King, and the other leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, that demonstrations, marches, majestic, soaring rhetoric, and even federal legislation, was not going to be enough to change, on a fundamental basis, the predominant and prevailinig cultural, economic, political and social values and priorities in America.A Southern backlash, against the Civil Right Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, urban riots in Northern cities, in spite of two major civil rights bills, the failure of King to integrate the suburbs, in and around Chicago, and the escalation of the Vietnam War, compelled him to take three months, during the latter part of 1966, and the first part of 1967, to write "Where Do We Go From Here: Community or Chaos".King's goal was to outline and communicate the 2nd and most important phase of what he called the Movement. In this, his last and most powerful book, King set out the bold and radical changes, in American thought and action, that all Americans, Black and White, in and out of the civil rights movement, needed to take, in business, culture, economics, education, politics, and religion, to achieve what he called "a revolutionary re-ordering of American values and priorites.Believe it or not, in this book, Dr. King deals with business, especially the power of boycotts, economics, education, jobs and job training, and the need for thoughtul and strategic engagement in politics, especially by Blacks, in an incredible amount of surprisingly bold and radical detail.One of the major things Dr. King committed to do in this book was the momentous decision that probably led to his cowardly assassination, at the Lorraine Motel, in Memphis, Tennessee: the decision to come out, aggressively and boldy, against President Lyndon B. Johnson, the United States government, and the expensive and murderdous war in Vietnam.But, at this point in Dr. King's career as a Minister of the Gospel, Civil Rights Leader, and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, as he said on the last day on this Earth, he had "been to the Mountaintop, and had seen the Promised Land".He was not afraid to, as he always put it, "Bear the Cross", so that the Americans, who live each day, working to achieve his vision of "the Beloved Community", could, one day, "wear the crown".After reading this book, it's up to each of us to to take a long, hard look at what we have and have not done in our own communities, and decide whether, based on the bold, radical, and transformative ideas propounded by Dr. King in "Where Do We Go From Here: Community or Chaos", has led to success, which is community, or failure, which is chaos.Even though most of us, especially our government and politicians, have not heeded Dr. King's warnings about the cost of not transforming the values and priorities of America, which, according to King, is "spiritual death", if we read and follow his advice, it's still not too late!!!