#when connor called wes' place ghetto

[kethabali]

hm so i started watching htgawm and so much DRAMA why.. maybe i don't understand the point of the show yet bc i'm still in season 1 but i'm already becoming disinterested bc so much drama and not for any valid plot reasons imo i wouldve stopped watching but i just am CRAVING a crime show and this one is kinda diverse (still racism in there and homophobia but at least theres poc and gay characters at all yknow) there's a lot of capitalism and neurotypical as the default messaging that i don't like

[nevadancitizen]

-> CH. 5: LIVE FOR A CENTURY, LEARN FOR A CENTURY

synopsis: you get hurt while chasing down another deviant. connor is introduced to your cat.

word count: 3.7k

ships: Connor/Reader, Hank Anderson & Reader

notes: i literally got into the most minor car accident ever (like, not even a fender bender. no one got hurt) and i couldn't sleep because i felt so shitty so that's why i'm posting at this ungodly hour (read: 6:30 am) 😭😭

HoFS taglist: @catladyhere (if you'd like to be added to the taglist, just ask!)

HEAD OF FALSE SECURITY MASTERLIST

The elevator shifts and jolts under your feet as it ascends. You catch yourself and splay a hand out on the wall to keep yourself from falling. 

“Fucking hate this,” you mumble. “Reminds me of the busted-up khrushchyovka I lived in just outside of St. Petersburg.”

“Was it in the ghetto?” Hank asks from the opposite side of the elevator.

“A slum, more like,” you say. “We don’t have ghettos. Not like here.”

You’re surprised Connor didn’t ask anything about the khrushchyovka. Instead, he’s just standing there, his eyes closed and idling.

The elevator dings, and you open the gate, letting you and Hank out. There isn’t a set of footsteps behind you as you walk. 

Hank stops in front of you, looking behind you. You follow Hank’s eyes. Connor’s still idling, his eyes still closed. 

“Hey, Connor!” Hank calls. “You run outta batteries or what?”

Connor’s eyes snap open, then he takes in his surroundings, realizing the elevator ride is over. “I’m sorry. I was making a report to CyberLife.”

“Huh,” Hank hums. Connor continues to idle. 

You smile. “Are you planning on staying in the elevator?”

“No!” He replies, almost indignant. “I’m coming.”

You laugh under your breath and turn to walk down the hall, not missing the look Hank gives you when he hears the emotion in Connor’s voice. 

Hank follows, looking at the chipped paint on the walls and the once-boarded-up windows. “What do we know about this guy?”

“Not much,” Connor says. “Just that a neighbor reported that he heard strange noises coming from this floor. Nobody’s supposed to be living here, but the neighbor said he saw a man hiding an LED under his cap.”

“Oh, Christ,” Hank groans. “If we have to investigate every time someone hears a strange noise, we’re gonna need more cops!”

You come to a stop outside of the door of the suspect’s apartment, double-checking the floor and apartment number. Hank stands beside you, leaning against the doorframe.

“Hey, were you really making a report back there in the elevator?” Hank asks. “Just by closing your eyes?”

“Correct,” Connor says. 

“Shit…” Hank mumbles. “Wish I could do that.”

“You could, if you had augmentations,” you say as you look through the peephole. “Not my kind, though. Mine are relatively unintrusive. What I’m talking about is some extreme jack-jaw or port-wrist shit.”

“Whatever.” Hank huffs.

You pull away from the door and sigh. “The peephole’s blocked.”

Connor takes your place and knocks on the door. “Anybody home?”

No response.

He knocks harder, basically banging his fist against the wood. “Open up! Detroit Police!”

There’s sounds from inside. A banging, something falling, frantic footsteps.

Hank immediately takes a step back, drawing his gun. “Stay behind me.”

You backpedal, and Connor holds out an arm to gauge where you are. It brushes against your midsection, like he’s making sure you’re behind him and safe.

Hank hoists a leg and kicks the door down. He points his gun forward as he slowly moves inside, checking corners and doors. 

Connor follows him, and you trail after. Hank busts through the last door, causing a cascade of pigeons to fly out. 

“What the fuck is this?!” Hank shouts. 

You and Connor move after him, entering the apartment. The rank smell of uncleaned bird shit immediately assaults your senses, causing you to cough despite yourself.

“What in the…?” You look around the apartment. Precisely-drawn mazes cover the walls, and pigeons and their mess covers the floor. They hoo and purr amongst themselves, looking at you, Hank, and Connor like you were the ones who didn’t belong here.

“Looks like we came for nothin’,” Hank calls from the other room. “Our man’s gone.”

“Well, we came all this way,” you say. “Let’s at least have a look around.”

You step closer to the wall, looking up at the maze drawn on it. Your eyes trace it – it’s hexagonal, and doesn’t seem to have any exit.

“Any ideas?” Hank says. 

“No,” you say. “But he’s definitely an android. No human is this precise. There’s not even a wiggle in the lines or any stray marks.”

“I’ve found something,” Connor calls from the bathroom. 

You lean into the doorway. “What, did he leave an expensive shampoo or something? I’m running out.”

“No,” Connor says. He moves to the side, revealing the obsessive writing covering the wall. 

“rA9,” he continues. “Written 2471 times. It’s the same sign Ortiz’s android wrote on the shower wall. Why are they obsessed with this sign…?”

“Could be superstition,” you say. “Even if it seems a bit silly. My mother rejected my father’s proposal just because it was on the eighteenth of May – it’s simply bad luck to do any act of romance on the eighteenth of any month. She accepted the next day, just as the clock hit 12:01 AM.”

“Huh. That’s an odd thing to do.” Connor turns to the sink and picks something up. 

“It’s superstition. Sometimes it doesn’t make sense.” You shrug. “What’ve you got there?”

“An LED,” Connor says. “It was deactivated just hours ago.”

“So the suspect could’ve known we were coming,” you say. “Or knew he fucked up somehow.”

“Officer, you keep referring to androids with gendered pronouns,” Connor says. “You do know androids don’t have sexes, right?”

“I know.” You shrug. “It’s just hard to call something that walks, talks, acts like a human an it. It feels… dehumanizing. Even if they’re not human.”

You level with Connor’s almost-unblinking gaze. “I know what you’re thinking. But I’m not a sympathizer,” you lie.

You pull away from the doorway, instead looking across the apartment again. You join Hank in peering around, half-assedly investigating. A poster catches your eye – one for the United Farms of Detroit. It’s a union of some sort, you think. 

“You Soviets love your unions,” Hank says from somewhere behind you.

“After the Great Purge, we couldn’t take any chances.” You sigh, running a finger along the edge of the poster. “Stalin fucked up a lot of the USSR. But we bounced back. We always do.”

The poster flutters in the wake of your touch, and the corner curls in on itself. You gasp softly as a crack in the wall turns out to be a hole. 

You pull the poster off completely, revealing the hole in the wall in its entirety. A journal sits neatly, nestled right next to a small box of .357 Magnum bullets. You flick it open, and inside, is a myriad of jumbles and mirrors of the mazes drawn on the wall. 

“Found something?” Hank asks. 

“Bullets for a revolver,” you say. “And a journal, but… it’s encrypted.”

You feel a brush against your elbow – soft, but far too solid to be ignored. You gasp and turn, only to see Connor.

“Боже!” You put a hand on your chest. “You scared the shit out of me!”

“I apologize, Officer,” Connor says. “May I see the journal?”

“I, uh… yeah,” you manage to squeak out. You’d take a step back, but your back is basically half a foot away from being flush against the wall.

Connor takes the journal from your hands, flicking through it just as you did. He shows no signs of moving, so you squeeze past him, a nervous hand on his upper arm. 

“Sorry,” you whisper as you move past. You can feel your face warm as your front brushes his side and internally curse yourself for being so easily affected. 

“You’re right,” Connor says. “It doesn’t match any codes I have in my database. This is a unique script.”

He tucks the journal in one of his inner jacket pockets and turns to investigate the apartment further. You watch as his eyes turn to the ceiling. 

“Is that a hole in the ceiling?” You ask. “This place really is falling apart.”

Suddenly, something drops from the hole and sends Connor crashing to the floor. It takes a second to register that it’s a person – or, android, rather. By that time, he’s already run out through the front door. 

Connor immediately books it after the suspect, disappearing around the corner. You immediately take after them despite being slow and human.

“He might have a gun!” You call after Connor.

“It does!” He calls back. 

Sure enough, you can see a revolver in the android’s hand. He points back and takes a blind potshot that misses both of you entirely. 

You count in your mind: five bullets left. 

You run across the roof, through greenhouses and over scaffolding. All the while, you count the gunshots: four – three – two. 

You come to a screeching halt on the edge of a roof, just watching in shock as Connor jumps from a moving train to another roof. “Твою ж мать!”

“That way!” Hank calls from behind you, out of breath and panting. “The right!”

You break for the scaffolding that connects the two buildings, trying to get ahead. You cut through a building, legs burning as you take the stairs. You burst through the roof exit, and –

Another body immediately collides into yours, and you close your arms around it on instinct. They throw their head back, hitting your nose with a sickening crack. You grunt and your eyes water, but you don’t let go. 

What does make you let go is the shocking, electric feeling of something happening to your leg. Your ears ring and you can’t hear your own scream as you collapse, cradling your calf. 

You can feel your lips forming curses, feel your vocal cords vibrate as you sputter and cry out. A hand comes to your back, warm and rough and one you recognize as Hank’s.

You can just barely hear him say “Hands off, hands off!” and pull your hands away from the entry wound. You can only faintly translate his words in your mind, but you know every word that leaves your lips is Russian. Thirium spills out and Hank desperately tries to keep it in. 

Through your blurred vision, you can see Connor turn the corner. You point after where the deviant went, sputtering “Одна пуля! У него только одна пуля!”

He nods and disappears after him in a blur of moving limbs and blue highlights. 

You try to adjust your position to watch him, but a jolt of pain runs up your leg and into your spine. “Блять – Hank!”

“It’s okay, I got you, kid.” He takes a handkerchief from the inside of his jacket, bunching up your pant leg and tying a makeshift tourniquet. 

Another gunshot rings out, and there’s the sound of a body falling to the ground. You grab Hank’s hand, stammering out “Connor! See Connor!”

He understands your kind-of-broken English and moves to the edge of the roof, looking over the edge. “It’s okay. The deviant killed itself, not Connor.”

You slump down, your back hitting the hard concrete. You sigh and close your eyes. “Слава богу.”

Hank kneels by your side and gently jostles your shoulder. “How come you never told me you had a prosthetic?”

You open your eyes and look up at him, slightly delirious from shock. “Ты ж ненавидишь андроидов. You hate androids.”

“Yeah, but I don’t hate you,” Hank says. He pats your hand, then stands. “C’mon. Let’s get you up and movin’.”

You sit up and let him move you, supporting you with an arm around your middle. “You’re real fuckin’ stupid sometimes, y’know that?”

“I know, Lieutenant.”

“Officer, please,” Connor says. “I insist that I at least be present while you repair yourself.”

You reach up into the cabinet and push jars of pickling mushrooms and cucumbers aside to find your spare parts. “Connor, I’ll be okay. I was just in shock earlier, and my nose has already been set.”

You pull your toolbox down and start to lay out what you need on the breakfast table. “Besides, I have a cat. She’s somewhere around the apartment. Don’t you like dogs?”

“I can tolerate cats,” Connor says. 

You lay down a towel on the table, then sit and hoist your calf onto the towel. “Well, she probably won’t tolerate you.”

Connor pulls up a chair next to you, eyeing the damage to your leg. He pulls off his blazer and drapes it on the back of the chair, then rolls up his sleeves. “At least let me supervise the repairs.”

“Fine,” you sigh. “Supervise all you want.”

You pick up a soldering iron and switch on the heating component. You gently pry a piece of metal away from your prosthetic, then cut it loose with the iron.

“Your hands are shaking,” Connor says. 

“No, they’re not,” you snap. Then, you pause and realize that he’s right. “I… okay. What do you want me to do about it?”

“Let me do the repairs.” He leans an elbow on the table and leans closer to you. “I’m an android, so you can trust me to be perfectly precise. If I mess up, I promise I’ll let you take over.”

You sigh and hand over the soldering iron. Connor takes it in one hand and steadies your leg with the other. You breathe out slowly, shakily at the touch. 

To his credit, his movements are smooth and precise. All of his concentration is focused on what he’s doing right now. 

After a few minutes, you quietly ask, “Why are you doing this?”

“It would be…” Connor pauses. “Detrimental if you weren’t able to accompany me and Hank on further cases. Less-than-ideal repairs could possibly cause worse damage than what was there initially.”

“Right,” you say softly. 

“May I ask you a question, Officer?” Connor asks, still concentrating. 

“Yeah,” you say. “What is it?”

“You acted like you were in… pain when your prosthetic got shot,” Connor says. “Why was that?”

“Phantom limb phenomenon,” you say. “Everything happened too quickly. My brain remembered what it should be feeling. So it just replayed the… the memory of…”

You look away, out the window. You swallow thickly, suppressing your words. Connor doesn’t need to know this. “Nevermind.”

“The memory of what, Officer?” Connor prompts. 

“Nothing,” you say. “It’s nothing.”

You can see Connor glance at you out of the corner of your eye. He then looks away, instead focusing on the repairs. 

Your eyes catch a flicker of movement in the hallway. It’s a small head and two pointed ears, peeking out of the doorway to your bedroom. Two green eyes, dilated in the low light, blink slowly at you. 

“Бронислава,” you say softly. Her ears perk up in response to hearing her name.

“Bronislava?” Connor parrots. 

You point down the hall. “My cat. She’s shy.”

Connor lifts the soldering iron and looks over his shoulder. As soon as Bronislava registers his eyes on her, she darts back into the room. 

“She’ll come around,” you say. “She was the same way with Hank.”

Connor turns back to your calf. He’s nearly done with the internal work. 

“How are you so good at that?” You ask. “Have you done this before?”

“No,” Connor says. “I just have an intricate knowledge of android parts and biocomponents.”

“That inspires confidence,” you mumble.

Connor huffs out a laugh. “I heard that.”

You lean back in your chair and adjust yourself, your knee knocking against Connor’s. “No, you didn’t.”

You smile to yourself as you replay the sound of Connor’s under-the-breath laugh in your mind. It was nice, even if it only lasted for a second. A weird feeling settles in your chest, like there’s something wrong with your diaphragm. 

“Are you okay, Officer?” Connor asks. “I detect an elevated heart rate and increased rate of breathing.”

“I’m fine,” you lie. “Just excited to get my repairs done, is all. I’ve done this enough times to know you’re almost done with the internals.”

“Hm.” Connor hums, then continues his work. You take the opportunity to take in his bare arms – it’s a rare sight. There really isn’t anything out of the ordinary about his forearms, no scars or blemishes, but you still appreciate it. 

Connor breaks into your line of thought. “May I ask you another question?”

“Yeah?” You say.

“It’s about Lieutenant Anderson,” Connor says. “Why does he hate androids so much?”

You feel your stomach sink. You look away and sigh sharply. “I’m not at liberty to answer that question.”

Connor stays silent this time. You’re kind of thankful for that. 

Bronislava peeks her head out of the doorway again, her eyes on Connor. You smile to yourself as you hear the bell on her collar just barely jingle. “Don’t look now, but Бронислава is looking at you. She’s curious.”

“Why is she curious about me?” Connor asks. 

“I don’t bring a lot of people back to my apartment,” you say. “I try to keep my work life and private life as separate as possible.”

You lean down a little and tap at one of the legs of your chair, then snap your fingers and click your tongue. “Бронислава! Иди сюда, детка.”

She lets out a soft, sort-of meow and rubs her cheek against the doorway. You laugh and coo, snapping your fingers again. “Сюда, девочка!”

“Does she only respond to Russian?” Connor asks. 

“Mostly,” you say. “She just responds better than English. Maybe it’s the way my voice changes when I speak Russian.”

You glance over at Connor. “Do you… know Russian?”

“I have a built-in translator,” Connor says. “But I haven’t spoken Russian before.”

“Try,” you say. “Repeat after me: Бронислава! Сюда, девочка!”

“брани–бранислава,” he tries in a sing-song tone. “Сюда, девочка.”

No, he doesn’t roll his r’s or pronounce the words quite right, but it still sparks a bloom of warmth in your chest. You bite the inside of your lip to keep from smiling.

Bronislava peeks further out, her paws on the hardwood floor instead of the carpet of the bedroom she came from. Her bell sounds, soft and tinkling.

“She might like your voice,” you say. 

When you glance at Connor, he’s smiling. Then, you look down at your leg – he’s nearly done sealing the externals. The white plastic is slowly fading away, replaced by a wave of color matching your skin tone. 

“How much longer?” You ask.

“Twenty-seven seconds,” Connor responds.

You sit back and watch Bronislava tentatively sniff the air as Connor finishes up. Her whiskers twitch and her mouth opens as she takes in Connor’s new, intrusive smell.

Connor smoothes his hand over your leg. “I’m done.”

You shiver slightly at the contact and pull your leg away, instead drawing your knee to your chest and resting your foot on the chair. You take the towel and wipe your leg of spilled Thirium, then hand it to Connor so he can wipe his hands.

“Look at Бронислава,” you say softly. “But don’t make it obvious.”

Connor slowly cranes his neck, looking down the hallway out of the corner of his eye. His face lights up a little when Brotislava comes into his view.

“Ah,” he says. “I see her.”

As soon as Bronislava sees that Connor’s eyes are on her again, she retreats back to the safety of the bedroom. 

“Damn,” you huff. You stand, trying out Connor’s repair. You lean a little on it and put weight on it – it holds. 

You put a hand on Connor’s blazer. “Can I take this? To introduce her to your scent.”

“Go ahead,” Connor says.

You take his blazer and retreat to your bedroom. You find Bronislava under your bed, her eyes so dilated you can’t see her irises. 

“Эй, красотка,” you say softly. You snap your fingers with your free hand. “Это всего лишь я.”

She slowly creeps forward, sniffing the air. She smells the blazer in your hand, which is surprisingly soft despite its stiffness. (You’re tempted to mirror her and smell it, but you immediately mentally slap yourself and call yourself a creep, even though the thought didn’t actualize.)

“Видишь? Всё хорошо,” you say, still with that quiet, docile tone. “Это всего лишь Коннор.”

Bronislava slowly crawls out from underneath your bed, inching towards the exit to the hallway. You follow her, staying on her level.

“Connor!” You whisper-shout once you’re in the hallway, Bronislava by your side. “She’s coming towards you. But don’t look at her.”

“Okay, Officer,” Connor says. Even though he’s facing away from you, you can hear the smile in his voice. “What will she do?”

“She’ll probably sniff you,” you say, watching as she inches along, sticking close to the baseboards. “Don’t move a muscle once she does.”

Bronislava glances back at you. “Давай, детка!” You encourage. She turns around and looks at Connor’s back, then continues crawling forward.

“She’s approaching your six,” you say, your tone faux-serious. “Contact imminent.”

Connor laughs. “Acknowledged.”

Bronislava nervously sniffs at the legs of Connor’s chair, then moves on and sniffs at his ankles. 

“Her whiskers are tickling me,” Connor says. 

“Just don’t move!” You laugh.

Bronislava continues exploring, if with a bit of nervousness. She sniffs at the hem of Connor’s jeans, then bites at a loose string.

Then, Connor moves a fraction of an inch. It sets Bronislava off, and she dashes past you and back into the bedroom. 

You lean in the doorway, watching as she disappears under the bed again. “Ох, моя бедняжка… Всё в порядке.”

“I’m sorry,” Connor says. “I was just trying to scan her…”

“It’s okay.” You stand, his blazer still in hand. “She usually just hides around new people. I’m proud of her. And she does seem to like you.”

“She likes me?” Connor says, a bit of excitement in his tone. 

“You sound like a teenager.” You laugh and stand up. You walk over to the table and drape Connor’s blazer over the back of his chair. “Thanks for letting me borrow that, by the way.”

“Of course,” Connor says. 

You move to the side and start to pack your spare parts away in your little toolbox, mentally noting the things you need to replace.

“One more thing,” Connor says. “Why didn’t you tell me you had a prosthetic?”

Your hands still. “It…” you sigh. “I don’t like talking about it. That’s it. It didn’t pertain to the investigation, and you didn’t ask about it, so I didn’t mention it.”

Connor’s LED flickers yellow, then returns to a calm blue. “Understood.”

[libertariantaoist]

Martin Luther King  "Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam"  April 30, 1967, Riverside Church, New York

The sermon which I am preaching this morning in a sense is not the usual kind  of sermon, but it is a sermon and an important subject, nevertheless, because  the issue that I will be discussing today is one of the most controversial issues  confronting our nation. I’m using as a subject from which to preach, “Why I  Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam.”

Now, let me make it clear in the beginning, that I see this war as an unjust,  evil, and futile war. I preach to you today on the war in Vietnam because my  conscience leaves me with no other choice. The time has come for America to  hear the truth about this tragic war. In international conflicts, the truth  is hard to come by because most nations are deceived about themselves. Rationalizations  and the incessant search for scapegoats are the psychological cataracts that  blind us to our sins. But the day has passed for superficial patriotism. He  who lives with untruth lives in spiritual slavery. Freedom is still the bonus  we receive for knowing the truth. “Ye shall know the truth,” says Jesus, “and  the truth shall set you free.” Now, I’ve chosen to preach about the war in Vietnam  because I agree with Dante, that the hottest places in hell are reserved for  those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality. There comes  a time when silence becomes betrayal.

The truth of these words is beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call  us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth,  men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially  in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against  all the apathy of conformist thought within one’s own bosom and in the surrounding  world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexing, as they often do  in the case of this dreadful conflict, we’re always on the verge of being mesmerized  by uncertainty. But we must move on. Some of us who have already begun to break  the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation  of agony. But we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate  to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for in  all our history there has never been such a monumental dissent during a war,  by the American people.

Polls reveal that almost fifteen million Americans explicitly oppose the war  in Vietnam. Additional millions cannot bring themselves around to support it.  And even those millions who do support the war [are] half-hearted, confused,  and doubt-ridden. This reveals that millions have chosen to move beyond the  prophesying of smooth patriotism, to the high grounds of firm dissent, based  upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Now, of course,  one of the difficulties in speaking out today grows the fact that there are  those who are seeking to equate dissent with disloyalty. It’s a dark day in  our nation when high-level authorities will seek to use every method to silence  dissent. But something is happening, and people are not going to be silenced.  The truth must be told, and I say that those who are seeking to make it appear  that anyone who opposes the war in Vietnam is a fool or a traitor or an enemy  of our soldiers is a person that has taken a stand against the best in our tradition.

Yes, we must stand, and we must speak. [tape skip]…have moved to break the  betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart,  as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam. Many  persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their  concerns, this query has often loomed large and loud: “Why are you speaking  about the war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent?” Peace and  civil rights don’t mix, they say. And so this morning, I speak to you on this  issue, because I am determined to take the Gospel seriously. And I come this  morning to my pulpit to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation.

This sermon is not addressed to Hanoi, or to the National Liberation Front.  It is not addressed to China or to Russia. Nor is it an attempt to overlook  the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution  to the tragedy of Vietnam. Nor is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the  National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they  must play in a successful resolution of the problem. This morning, however,  I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the National Liberation Front, but rather  to my fellow Americans, who bear the greatest responsibility, and entered a  conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents.

Now, since I am a preacher by calling, I suppose it is not surprising that  I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision.  There is…a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam  and the struggle I and others have been waging in America. A few years ago there  was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed that there was a real promise  of hope for the poor, both black and white, through the Poverty Program. There  were experiments, hopes, and new beginnings. Then came the build-up in Vietnam.  And I watched the program broken as if it was some idle political plaything  of a society gone mad on war. And I knew that America would never invest the  necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures  like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money, like some demonic,  destructive suction tube. And you may not know it, my friends, but it is estimated  that we spend $500,000 to kill each enemy soldier, while we spend only fifty-three  dollars for each person classified as poor, and much of that fifty-three dollars  goes for salaries to people that are not poor. So I was increasingly compelled  to see the war as an enemy of the poor, and attack it as such.

Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear  to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hope of the poor  at home. It was sending their sons, and their brothers, and their husbands to  fight and die in extraordinarily high proportion relative to the rest of the  population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by society  and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast  Asia which they had not found in Southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have  been repeatedly faced with a cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on  TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to  seat them together in the same school room. So we watch them in brutal solidarity,  burning the huts of a poor village. But we realize that they would hardly live  on the same block in Chicago or Atlanta. Now, I could not be silent in the face  of such cruel manipulation of the poor.

My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out  of my experience in the ghettos of the North over the last three years–especially  the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and  angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not  solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while  maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through  non-violent action; for they ask and write me, “So what about Vietnam?” They  ask if our nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems  to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that  I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in  the ghettos without first having spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of  violence in the world today: my own government. For the sake of those boys,  for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling  under our violence I cannot be silent. Been a lot of applauding over the last  few years. They applauded our total movement; they’ve applauded me. America  and most of its newspapers applauded me in Montgomery. And I stood before thousands  of Negroes getting ready to riot when my home was bombed and said, we can’t  do it this way. They applauded us in the sit-in movement–we non-violently decided  to sit in at lunch counters. The applauded us on the Freedom  Rides when we accepted blows without retaliation. They praised us in Albany  and Birmingham and Selma, Alabama. Oh, the press was so noble in its applause,  and so noble in its praise when I was saying, Be non-violent toward Bull  Connor;when I was saying, Be non-violent toward [Selma, Alabama segregationist  sheriff] Jim Clark. There’s something strangely inconsistent about a nation  and a press that will praise you when you say, Be non-violent toward Jim Clark,  but will curse and damn you when you say, “Be non-violent toward little brown  Vietnamese children. There’s something wrong with that press!

As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were  not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1964. And  I cannot forget that the Nobel Peace Prize was not just something taking place,  but it was a commission–a commission to work harder than I had ever worked  before for the brotherhood of Man. This is a calling that takes me beyond national  allegiances. But even if it were not present, I would yet have to live with  the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me, the relationship  of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel  at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war. Could it be that they  do not know that the Good News was meant for all men, for communists and capitalists,  for their children and ours, for black and white, for revolutionary and conservative.  Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the One who loved His  enemies so fully that he died for them? What, then, can I say to the Vietcong,  or to Castro, or to Mao, as a faithful minister to Jesus Christ? Can I threaten  them with death, or must I not share with them my life? Finally, I must be true  to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be the son of the  Living God. Beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is this vocation of  sonship and brotherhood. And because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned,  especially for His suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come today  to speak for them. And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within  myself for ways to understand and respond in compassion, my mind goes constantly  to the people of that peninsula. I speak not now of the soldiers of each side,  not of the military government of Saigon, but simply of the people who have  been under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think  of them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution  until some attempt is made to know these people and hear their broken cries.

Now, let me tell you the truth about it. They must see Americans as strange  liberators. Do you realize that the Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence  in 1945 after a combined French and Japanese occupation. And incidentally, this  was before the Communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh.  And this is a little-known fact, and these people declared themselves independent  in 1945. They quoted our  Declaration of Independence in their document  of freedom, and yet our government refused to recognize them. President Truman  said they were not ready for independence. So we fell victim as a nation at  that time of the same deadly arrogance that has poisoned the international situation  for all of these years. France then set out to reconquer its former colony.  And they fought eight long, hard, brutal years trying to re-conquer Vietnam.  You know who helped France? It was the United States of America. It came to  the point that we were meeting more than eighty percent of the war costs. And  even when France started despairing of its reckless action, we did not. And  in 1954, a conference was called at Geneva, and an agreement was reached, because  France had been defeated at Dien  Bien Phu. But even after that, and after the Geneva Accord, we did not stop.  We must face the sad fact that our government sought, in a real sense, to sabotage  the Geneva Accord. Well, after the French were defeated, it looked as if independence  and land reform would come through the Geneva agreement. But instead the United  States came and started supporting a man named Diem  who turned out to be one of the most ruthless dictators in the history of  the world. He set out to silence all opposition. People were brutally murdered  because they raised their voices against the brutal policies of Diem. And the  peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly rooted out all opposition. The  peasants watched as all this was presided over by United States influence and  by increasing numbers of United States troops who came to help quell the insurgency  that Diem’s methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown, they may have been  happy, but the long line of military dictatorships seemed to offer no real change,  especially in terms of their need for land and peace. And who are we supporting  in Vietnam today? It’s a man by the name of general Ky [Air Vice Marshal Nguyen  Cao Ky] who fought with the French against his own people, and who said on one  occasion that the greatest hero of his life is Hitler. This is who we are supporting  in Vietnam today. Oh, our government and the press generally won’t tell us these  things, but God told me to tell you this morning. The truth must be told.

The only change came from America as we increased our troop commitments in  support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept, and without popular  support and all the while the people read our leaflets and received regular  promises of peace and democracy and land reform. Now they languish under our  bombs and consider us, not their fellow Vietnamese, the real enemy. They move  sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration  camps, where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move or  be destroyed by our bombs. So they go, primarily women, and children and the  aged. They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their  crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to  destroy the precious trees. They wander into the towns and see thousands of  thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the  streets like animals. They see the children degraded by our soldiers as they  beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting  for their mothers. We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions:  the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We  have cooperated in the crushing of the nation’s only noncommunist revolutionary  political force, the United Buddhist Church. This is a role our nation has taken,  the role of those who make peaceful revolutions impossible but refusing to give  up the privileges and the pleasures that comes from the immense profits of overseas  investments. I’m convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world  revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. 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, militarism and economic  exploitation are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and  justice of many of our present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play  the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act.  One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be changed so that  men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey  on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar.  A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast  of poverty and wealth with righteous indignation. It will look across the seas  and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia,  Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for  the social betterment of the countries, and say, “This is not just.” It will  look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say, “This  is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach  others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values  will lay hands on the world order and say of war, “This way of settling differences  is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling  our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of  hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark  and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged,  cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues  year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of  social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

Oh, my friends, if there is any one thing that we must see today is that these  are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems  of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new  systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people  of the land are rising up as never before. The people who sat in darkness have  seen a great light. They are saying, unconsciously, as we say in one of our  freedom songs, “Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around!” It is a sad fact that  because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, our proneness to  adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary  spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This  has driven many to feel that only Marxism has a revolutionary spirit. Therefore,  communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow  through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our  ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile  world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this  powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo, we shall boldly  challenge unjust mores, and thereby speed up the day when “every valley shall  be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the rough places  shall be made plain, and the crooked places straight. And the glory of the Lord  shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.”

A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties  must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop  an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in  their individual societies. This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts  neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality  a call for an all-embracing, unconditional love for all men. This oft misunderstood  and misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world  as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival  of mankind. And when I speak of love I’m not speaking of some sentimental and  weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions  have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key  that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist  belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle  of John: “Let us love one another, for God is love. And every one that loveth  is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God  is love. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected  in us.”

Let me say finally that I oppose the war in Vietnam because I love America.  I speak out against this war, not in anger, but with anxiety and sorrow in my  heart, and, above all, with a passionate desire to see our beloved country stand  as the moral example of the world. I speak out against this war because I am  disappointed with America. And there can be no great disappointment where there  is not great love. I am disappointed with our failure to deal positively and  forthrightly with the triple evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism.  We are presently moving down a dead-end road that can lead to national disaster.  America has strayed to the far country of racism and militarism. The home that  all too many Americans left was solidly structured idealistically; its pillars  were solidly grounded in the insights of our Judeo-Christian heritage. All men  are made in the image of God. All men are bothers. All men are created equal.  Every man is an heir to a legacy of dignity and worth. Every man has rights  that are neither conferred by, nor derived from the State–they are God-given.  Out of one blood, God made all men to dwell upon the face of the earth. What  a marvelous foundation for any home! What a glorious and healthy place to inhabit.  But America’s strayed away, and this unnatural excursion has brought only confusion  and bewilderment. It has left hearts aching with guilt and minds distorted with  irrationality.

It is time for all people of conscience to call upon America to come back  home. Come home, America. Omar Khayyam is right: “The moving finger writes,  and having writ moves on.” I call on Washington today. I call on every man and  woman of good will all over America today. I call on the young men of America  who must make a choice today to take a stand on this issue. Tomorrow may be  too late. The book may close. And don’t let anybody make you think that God  chose America as his divine, messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the  whole world. God has a way of standing before the nations with judgment, and  it seems that I can hear God saying to America, “You’re too arrogant! And if  you don’t change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power,  and I’ll place it in the hands of a nation that doesn’t even know my name. Be  still and know that I’m God.”

Now it isn’t easy to stand up for truth and for justice. Sometimes it means  being frustrated. When you tell the truth and take a stand, sometimes it means  that you will walk the streets with a burdened heart. Sometimes it means losing  a job…means being abused and scorned. It may mean having a seven, eight year  old child asking a daddy, “Why do you have to go to jail so much?” And I’ve  long since learned that to be a follower to the Jesus Christ means taking up  the cross. And my bible tells me that Good Friday comes before Easter. Before  the crown we wear, there is the cross that we must bear. Let us bear it–bear  it for truth, bear it for justice, and bear it for peace. Let us go out this  morning with that determination. And I have not lost faith. I’m not in despair,  because I know that there is a moral order. I haven’t lost faith, because the  arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. I can still  sing “We Shall Overcome” because Carlyle was right: “No lie can live forever.”  We shall overcome because William Cullen Bryant was right: “Truth pressed to  earth will rise again.” We shall overcome because James Russell Lowell was right:  “Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne.” Yet, that scaffold  sways the future. We shall overcome because the bible is right: “You shall reap  what you sow.” With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of  despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling  discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith  we will be able to speed up the day when justice will roll down like waters,  and righteousness like a mighty stream. With this faith we will be able to speed  up the day when the lion and the lamb will lie down together, and every man  will sit under his own vine and fig tree, and none shall be afraid because the  words of the Lord have spoken it. With this faith we will be able to speed up  the day when all over the world we will be able to join hands and sing in the  words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty,  we’re free at last!” With this faith, we’ll sing it as we’re getting ready to  sing it now. Men will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into  pruning hooks. And nations will not rise up against nations, neither shall they  study war anymore. And I don’t know about you, I ain’t gonna study war no more.

Transcript by Gary Handman, UC Berkeley Media Resources Center, 2006