Where are today's Luther Kings?

I was about to write this column when I remembered that on January 15, 1929, Martin Luther King was born, one of the world figures whose identity it is not necessary to explain who they were because they have been engraved in the minds and hearts of those who are not afraid of peace but of war.

The indefatigable and emblematic fighter against racism and apartheid would have turned 95 today. He could be alive. He was murdered at the age of 39. But sometimes it only takes a day or an hour or a phrase to change the course of history. We are reminded of this by the words of that young prophet: "I have a dream that one day, in the red mountains of Georgia, the children of former slaves and the children of former masters will be able to sit at the table of fraternity." That dream cost him his life.

And yet, neither that innocent blood nor that prophetic dream was useless. They gave rise to countless movements and struggles against all forms of racism that, although many of them are still alive as they are here in Brazil, we are aware of their ignominy.

The question we should ask ourselves on this anniversary of the courageous and prophetic Luther King is where are those young people today who are capable of risking their lives to make possible new and old dreams of liberation from all slavery. From skin color to gender. Rather, we are observing that old and new racisms have not only not disappeared but are being strengthened, just as the old wars that put the world at risk are rising from their graves.

There is a lot of discussion today about new teaching methods in schools and universities. The extreme right, which is growing in the world under the ambiguity of religion, defends an education based on the Bible, on what they call tradition, closer to the Middle Ages than to the new liberating conquests.

Replicating Martin Luther King's prophetic motto, "I have a dream," which he paid for with his life, today the world is in need of finding new dreams of freedom. The paradox is that we live in the era in which the messages sent to the world by those who fight for freedoms are favored as never before by new communication techniques that reach the entire planet in seconds.

What saddens those who even today continue to fight against the dreams of new violence and new discrimination, is that the networks are nourished more than by messages of peace and fraternity, but by statistics of deaths in wars. Of lies in the sunlight, of falsifications, of stimuli to violence.

Words that evoke peace, freedom, fraternity between individuals and peoples, the joy of living together and mixed, the thirst for new dreams worthy of pride, seem to be overshadowed by the eagerness to see who is more refined and effective in deception, in creating discord and even in the sad art of threatening.

It is hard to write, and even more so on the anniversary of Luther King, but in these years, after his vile assassination, the world has improved little in its worst instincts of violence and discrimination of all kinds. The possibility that the science of medicine and even AI could extend human life without limits is already on the horizon.

The question is: what for? To put an end to violence, to have more time to love each other and be happy together and equal, or to perfect the demons of violence and increasingly refined discrimination?

I have always argued that it is not true that the past was better than the present. Today we have a thousand reasons to live better, with greater comforts and possibilities of all kinds. Even with millions of poor people, but with social policies never dreamed of in the past and with women being able to look men in the face without the complex of feeling inferior. We continue to suffer racism and discrimination, but at least we are aware of it so that we can fight, something that was previously seen as normal.

If Luther King was seen as a hero for condemning the racism that crushed blacks in his time, today, even though the fight is not over, we are a thousand times more convinced than we were just a hundred years ago that all discrimination that strikes humans is a crime.

What is still needed is for these young people, who dominate the networks reaching millions of people, to be able to place their genius and skills at the service of the causes that make humanity proud instead of becoming war cries, if not dumps of falsehoods.

Curiously, today the major national newspapers ask medical science about the importance of dreams, something that Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, had already analyzed. What is perhaps less talked about, and there seems to be a certain shame in doing so, is the dreams of liberation, those that cost Luther King his life, but whose strength is still alive and is the only one capable of saving us from old and new slavery.

Brazilian poet Roseana Murray, winner of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, improvised these verses for the column:

Some Men Are Stars

On the hardest nights.

They are compasses in the rough seas.

They are threads of hope.

Some build peace with just their name,

even if they're already gone.

So today, Luther King

It is still a spring of water and glass.

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