On the rise of drone warfare, and the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination

ling_lisa_mlk_essay.png

by Lisa Ling

"On April 4, 1968, civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated as he stood unsuspectingly on his motel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee. The cowardly murderer targeted King from a distance, hiding in a bathtub while he aimed his rifle out the bathroom window. Just like that—a man whose life revolved around speaking truth to power—was targeted and killed. Fifty years later, we must honor Dr. King’s legacy by grappling with our own hypocrisy around targeted killing."

In this Instick essay, Lisa Ling, drone-warfare whistleblower and Frontline interim Board member, considers how Martin Luther King Jr. might have reacted to indiscriminate killings of civilians around the globe under the the U.S. drone program, were he alive today.

Because of the blood on the tracks

Because of the blood on the tracks

Brian Willson was 46 years old Sept. 1, 1987, the day he sat down across railroad tracks leading out of Concord Naval Weapons Station in Concord, Calif., ahead of an oncoming train. But the things he’d seen and done by that age seem to speak of a man who’d lived many shades of many different lives.

Overcoming Mental Health Challenges as Movement Leaders and Activists

Overcoming Mental Health Challenges as Movement Leaders and Activists

by Joel Preston Smith, from Minds of the Movement (International Center on Nonviolent Conflict)

Human rights activist Beatrice Karore was five months pregnant when she was shot twice in the hips with rubber bullets and beaten by police Oct. 14, 2012, after a protest against lawlessness in Mathare, a shantytown in Nairobi, Kenya.

Two hours earlier, Karore stood on a dirt road that transects the slum, staring at the bodies of two young men who’d been knocked off their motorcycle and clubbed to death. A crowd was gathering—angry, vocal, demanding that police take action. Karore, who was known as a social justice organizer and had made something of a name for herself by running for (but losing) a seat on the Nairobi County Assembly the preceding December, led the procession to the Humura Police Station in Nairobi.

Traditional Healers Need Apply

Traditional Healers Need Apply

We respect traditional health practitioners not just because we want to be ‘inclusive,’ but because they’re effective.

Research published this September in the journal "Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry," for example, notes that traditional practitioners are “crucial in reducing global mental health challenges."