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.