Little Ones and High Crimes
Editor’s Note: In light of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, DC Service Corps volunteer Sam Alves relates Dr. King to Jesus and finds hope in Jesus’ Resurrection.
The author with his origami crown at Little Friends for Peace’s 2026 MLK Day Celebration at Holy Redeemer Catholic Church.
In our Peace Classes last month, we spent a week learning about one of Little Friends for Peace’s favorite peacemakers, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. At one school in particular, in the handful of times his name has come up in conversation, the kindergarten students have asked all year about whether he died – and, more revealingly, how he died.
We are in a bit of a bind handling this conversation with five and six-year-olds. Usually, our organization’s director MJ Park says something like, “Some people did not agree with Dr. King’s ideas and were not very peaceful.” (A third grader at another school was quick to point out that Dr. King was shot and killed; evidently, age eight is about the time that word gets out on the true nature of Dr. King’s death.)
Like Jesus’ martyrdom, if you were to say “Dr. King died,” that would technically be true, but you’d be leaving out very important context. Both men were extrajudicially executed for political purposes. In plain terms, they were both assassinated – one death more drawn out than the other.
With Lent and our renewed study of the Cross fast-approaching, it is my growing conviction that we should more explicitly describe the Passion with the defined legal terms of conspiracy and assassination. A main reason for that belief is because similar forces of conspiracy and extrajudicial murder have continued to work through the repressive violence in our country and our world through the ages and into today. Their cruelty knows no bounds. Agents of ICE and the Israeli Defense Force detain and/or kill not just adults but children, too.
When Dr. King saw pictures of napalmed Vietnamese children, he wept in front of the photos’ photographer, William F. Pepper (who later would become the foremost investigator of King’s assassination). The brutalized, suffering, terrified children of Vietnam in the 1960s or in our country today are no different than the children in Peace Class every week.
Dr. King’s response to seeing the suffering children of Vietnam was not so different from Jesus’ response to the death of his friend, Lazarus. He shared in the mourning so integral to our humanity, but his divinity marked a new age on Earth when he rose Lazarus from the dead.
Author and Catholic worker James Douglass writes, “A man with the power to restore life to his people is a radical counterthreat to the empire’s power of death.” Just imagine if Alex Pretti walked the streets of the Twin Cities today.
Indeed, these are dangerous times. What reason is there for hope when not just adults but children face paramilitary violence and displacement? Where will we find our consolation? Jesus gives us the answer in the awesome hope of the Resurrection, a hope which we will only begin to appreciate when we contextualize the state violence and mourning which precedes it.
Question for Reflection: How can you share the hope of the Resurrection to promote peace in your community?
Additional media: Recap reel from MLK Peace Classes
