Living Dr. King's Example in Dangerous Times

Why Civic Engagement Is Our Only Way Through

On this Martin Luther King Day, I find myself thinking less about the monuments and more about the marching.

We are living through a season when many Americans are rightly angry and afraid. We see government power used in ways that feel punitive rather than protective. We watch reckless rhetoric and escalatory military moves that treat war as a talking point instead of a last resort. We feel institutions that were supposed to serve and protect us are drifting further away, insulated from accountability and indifferent to us — the people they represent.

Fear and confusion in a moment like this is understandable. But paralyzing despair is not our only option.

Dr. King knew something about living under abusive power and constant threat. He did not answer those abuses by withdrawing. He answered them with disciplined, courageous engagement — the hard, unglamorous work of organizing, educating, marching, negotiating, and, when necessary, sitting in a jail cell rather than surrendering his conscience.

King’s moral genius was not abstract. He showed people how to push back against injustice, stand up to tyranny, and turn private conviction into public courage. He reminded us that “the time is always right to do what is right,” not when it is easy or safe, but when justice is on the line.

Our democracy is not held together by hashtags or press conferences. It is held together by the connective tissue between citizens and institutions — the habits of participation, the practice of holding power to account, the willingness to insist that national security and national dignity belong to all of us, not to a frightened few behind closed doors.

Reconnecting our republic means living in community with empathy, integrity, and responsibility. Taking actions that honor and strengthen our connection to each other.

Today, following King’s example means at least three things.

First, refuse to remain silent. When we see abuses of power at home or reckless saber-rattling abroad, we do not shrug and change the channel. We ask hard questions. Like our fellow Americans in Minneapolis, we demand lawful, constitutional conduct from those who wield the instruments of surveillance, force, and coercion. We insist that the policies made and actions taken in our name be worthy of the people they affect.

Second, choose responsible and disciplined civic action over performative outrage. Dr. King did not confuse moral clarity with online fury. He built coalitions, testified, marched, organized economic pressure, and forced the country to look in the mirror. In our time, that may look like running for school boards and city councils, serving on oversight bodies, protecting election systems, or working inside institutions to bend them back toward law and justice. These methods may seem quaint against the backdrop of real trauma being visited on Americans now. Yet our history shows them as proven tools for action and the minimum starting point for enduring change.

Third, widen the circle. Inclusivity is the “strength in numbers” we most need now. The fight for our democracy is not just for some Americans, or my identity versus your identity. It’s for all of us. King’s dream was not a narrow one; it insisted that America’s promise must belong to all peoples, or it will ultimately belong to none.

In an age of cheap division, recommitting to that vision means defending the equal worth and safety of our neighbors — across race, faith, party, and place — even when we disagree on policy. That is not sentimentalism; it’s strategic. A republic in which citizens and neighbors cannot see each other’s humanity will not hold together under pressure.

King often spoke of the “arc of the moral universe” bending toward justice, but he never suggested it bent by itself. It bends when ordinary people decide to pull — again and again — toward courage, truth, and shared dignity.

On this day, in these extraordinarily challenging times for our nation and communities, holding on to America’s living mosaic is not about weaponized nostalgia or torching the shared stories that made ‘we the people’ imaginable. It is about recognizing that our history is complex and messy, and our democracy imperfect and evolving.

It is about citizens who refuse to be spectators to their own history, who choose civic engagement over escape, and who take up Dr. King’s example as a moral champion for a just America — not as a story from our past, but as an assignment for the present struggle to protect and perfect our democracy.

The work of reconnecting the republic is ours. The moment is now. Dr. King would not hesitate. Neither should we.