Honoring Dr. King’s Full Vision: Anti-War, Anti-Racism, Anti-Poverty
Barely three weeks into 2026, we have been confronted with an escalation of state violence at home and abroad. Across the country, ICE raids are tearing apart families and spreading fear in our neighborhoods. People are being detained, deported, and killed with little accountability. This state violence extends abroad as the US administration continues to carry out invasions, kidnappings, and wars waged for power and profit, most recently with the abduction of Venezuelan President Maduro. These are not isolated abuses. They are all connected parts of a system that uses repression to maintain empire and protect corporate wealth at the expense of working-class people everywhere.
This violence is a brutal reminder of the world Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. warned us about when he named racism, war, and poverty as the “three evils” destroying the soul of the nation. He named them not as abstract forces, but as interlocking systems that sacrifice human lives for empire and profit. As GAR members organize pan-Asian communities for cross-community solidarity with Black and Brown communities, we know that these forces are the reason many of us are here. Our families and communities have fled wars of empire, been targeted by racist exclusion and incarceration, and been used as wedges in an exploitative system that sacrifices all working-class people for profit.
Honoring Dr. King’s legacy means we refuse a sanitized version of his work. We carry forward his uncompromising commitment to confronting empire, racism, and economic exploitation. As we continue to face compounding crises, reclaiming his anti-war, anti-racist, and anti-capitalist vision means standing firmly for working-class unity and committing to the hard, long-term work of organizing and base-building in our communities for solidarity.
This moment calls for you. Our neighbors and our communities are asking us to step up, to be present, and to show up for one another. All our struggles are interconnected, and our liberation is bound up with one another’s. Only through solidarity can we confront racism, war, and poverty together and build the people power needed to create a world where everyone has dignity, safety, and justice.
TAKE ACTION
Send a letter to your representatives to urge Congress to cut ICE funding!
Make and cancel reservations to shut Hilton hotels down in Minnesota until they stop housing ICE. Instructions from Sunrise Movement here.
Cut the Fuel by boycotting gas and oil companies on January 19. Do not buy gas of any kind on that day!
Have meaningful conversations with those around you to convince them to take action too! Here’s a helpful conversation guide from May Day Strong.