Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And Palestine

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A letter from USCPR Executive Director Ahmad Abuznaid on Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2025

The ceasefire is in effect. 90 Palestinian political prisoners have been freed. No matter what happens next, the unbreakable spirit of Palestinian resistance and steadfastness will live on forever.

How Dr. King And Palestine Are Connected

"So today capitalism has outlived its usefulness. It has brought about a system that takes necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes." —Martin Luther King Jr.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s radical anticapitalist teachings continue to be relevant to the class struggle in the U.S. and Palestine. Politicians, bribed with dark money, abuse our tax dollars to fund genocide—even after a ceasefire agreement—and accelerate climate catastrophe. Health insurance companies kill Americans by cutting them off from life-saving care while the pandemic continues. The working class faces surging rent and grocery prices.

And corporate-owned media outlets are peddling the lie that everything is fine.

Justice Cannot Wait: From Ferguson to Palestine

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. knew justice could not wait for any marginalized community. 

He fought against anti-Black racism, segregation, and the Vietnam War. He advocated for redistributing wealth to the masses. He wanted to fund care for our communities—not billions of dollars for killing in the Vietnam War. The same principle applies to the genocide in Palestine today, which doesn’t stop when the bombs stop dropping.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration sent $17.9 billion of our tax dollars to the Israeli military in 2024 alone. All of which could have funded local community care instead.

Trump will be inaugurated today, and he’ll likely move to carry out Project 2025’s massive funding for militarism, policing, and immigration detention.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

The world we’re fighting for is the opposite of Project 2025. Our Not My Tax Dollars collective vision to fund care, not killing, is formed in collaboration with our partners for you.

Not My Tax Dollars: Invest in housing, healthcare, education, climate & economic justice

Divest from: militarism, police & prisons, immigration detention, corporations


You can look up your city on our updated Not My Tax Dollars map to see what it looks like to fund car instead of killing. The frontlines of our movement is talking to our friends and community. Be sure to share what you find as you reimagine our world.

Today is another day we resist, as civil rights, anti-apartheid, antiwar, and landback activists have done before us. Double down, divest, and escalate, for as MLK said, the arc of the moral universe will bend toward justice.

Onward to liberation,

Executive Director