“. . . the fierce urgency of now.”*What Are You Doing for Others?*

* Rev. Martin Luther King

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"Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?'" Martin Luther King Jr. asked this of us, and the question reverberates with a new ferocity today, echoing through the chambers of our individual souls and our collective conscience as we watch the fabric of compassion being deliberately torn. It is a question that demands we look inward before we can truly look outward, that we examine the foundation upon which we build our lives and our communities—especially now, when that foundation trembles beneath our feet.

Dr. King understood that injustice anywhere threatens justice everywhere. He taught us that we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Yet today, we watch as ICE raids sweep through communities, disappearing not only immigrants but American citizens into detention centers, severing families as casually as one might tear pages from a book. We watch as children are ripped from parents' arms, as neighbors vanish in the night, as the promise of due process dissolves like morning mist. This is not security. This is cruelty masquerading as policy.

America! America! God shed His grace on thee. These words, sung across generations, speak to an aspiration—not a completion, but a calling. Yet how do we sing of grace while Christian Nationalism weaponizes scripture, transforming the radical compassion of Jesus into a cudgel of exclusion? The same Gospel that commanded "love thy neighbor" and "welcome the stranger" is being twisted to justify hatred, to sanctify bigotry, to baptize the very xenophobia that King spent his life dismantling. This is not faith. This is idolatry wearing a cross.

And in the digital town squares where we gather, something even more insidious festers. Social media has become a breeding ground for sociopathic discourse, where cruelty is mistaken for courage and the absence of empathy is celebrated as "telling it like it is." Anonymous voices spew venom at transgender children, at refugees, at anyone whose existence challenges their narrow worldview. They mistake their rage for righteousness, their fear for wisdom. But Dr. King warned us: "Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."

And crown thy good with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea. Brotherhood—and sisterhood, and siblinghood. This is not mere sentiment. It is the architecture of survival. When we nurture and protect one another, when we extend our circle of concern beyond the comfortable boundaries of the familiar, we are not being charitable. We are being wise. We are recognizing that the wellbeing of the whole depends upon the dignity of each part.

This is what we must embrace: the Spanish-speaking grandmother who has lived here for forty years, who tends her garden and loves her grandchildren and deserves to sleep without fear of midnight raids. The Muslim family whose prayers are as sacred as any whispered in church pews. The Black mother who should not have to teach her son how to survive a traffic stop. The LGBTQ+ youth who seek simply to exist without terror. These are not abstractions. These are our neighbors, our colleagues, our fellow travelers in this brief journey we call life.

This is what we must reject: the lie that scarcity demands selfishness, that difference equals danger, that security comes from walls rather than bridges. We must reject the poison of xenophobia that tells us some lives matter less than others. We must reject racism in all its forms—from the overt violence of hate crimes to the subtle violence of "I don't see color." We must reject the weaponization of religion to justify the very sins its prophets condemned. We must reject the notion that cruelty, when directed at the "right" targets, is somehow justified.

Dr. King knew that "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice"—yet he also knew it bends only because people bend it with their hands, their hearts, their very lives. He did not preach patience to the oppressed; he preached urgency to the complicit. "We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today," he declared. "We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now."

What are you doing for others? The question rises from the ground of our being, from that deep place where we know ourselves to be part of something larger. It travels upward through the heart, where compassion either blooms or dies. It reaches toward the crown, where we glimpse our highest purpose: not to hoard grace but to become its instrument.

O beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain. This beauty is not ours to claim; it is ours to tend. For ourselves, yes, but more importantly, for those who will inherit what we leave behind. The spacious skies must remain breathable. The amber waves must feed generations yet unborn. And the promise of this land—any land, every land—is kept only when we choose service over selfishness, connection over division, love over fear.

The question persists. The question is urgent. The question is now. Dr. King left us not just with words but with a blueprint: beloved community built on justice, on dignity, on the revolutionary act of seeing the divine in every human face. The answer is ours to write, not with words alone, but with the daily practice of our lives—in how we vote, how we speak, how we show up when someone is being harmed, how we choose again and again to bend that arc with our own trembling, determined hands.

By Democracy Is Us Council Member Joe Castagliola