It was so encouraging to read in the Herald about the stirring of a nonviolent “Occupy” movement on campus.  

For the first time in about forty years, there is a sense of hope in the air. It reminds me of the wonderful SNCC movement of the 1960s that helped people remember the ideals found in the Declaration of Independence and end some of the worst racial inequities in this nation.  

The current struggle against corporate America is important, and as Chris Hedges has written, “We have to grasp as [Karl] Marx and Adam Smith did, that corporations are not concerned with the common good.

“They exploit, pollute, impoverish, repress, kill and lie to make money.” 

Martin Luther King has been in the news the past few days, but so many people try to tame him.

If he were alive today, he would be camping out with the occupiers. In the last year of his life, he called for “a radical redistribution of economic and political power…” King continued, “Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all of God’s children.”

 I congratulate Ellie Osborne and Peyton Crenshaw — go for it!

Charles J. Bussey

Professor Emeritus, History