The sound of protest

I've been listening to some great new music this week from an outfit called Fold. You can check them out and pay whatever you like to download their output here and here. What's more, when you buy their music, some of your money will distributed to organisations working for greater justice in our society.

One of the tracks - We must speak - puts these prophetic words of Martin Luther King over a wash of beats and vocals:

'I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. A time comes when silence is betrayal. The truth of these words is beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation, for those that call us enemy. For no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers. We are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative method of protest possible. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.'

It's that last sentence that has been niggling at me since I first heard it on Tuesday. And it is those words that came to mind when  read these two great stories about different kinds of protesters - one at St Paul's and one in the States