Jan 16
MLK, web3, and what it really means to build bridges
Most people think of Martin Luther King, Jr. as a man of peace. A bridge builder. A dreamer. A community organizer. A steady leader. A master diplomat.
But let’s be clear about what it means to become those things.
It means kicking ass and taking names.
MLK was a radical.
A firestarter.
And he was angry AF.
You don’t make soaring speeches as he did because you only carry love in your heart.
Just as you don’t build a meaningful community with a product. You craft it through fire.
The Occupy movement and web3
At the end of his life, King reportedly looked to the more radical Malcolm X. But people don’t like to talk about THAT Martin Luther King, Jr.
Most don’t have a taste for the radical measures needed to enact change that means something. Companies, for example, like to talk about their mission, vision, and values — but only the hardy few will commit to them when the next George Floyd happens.
The bottom-feeding opportunists are many in web3, but the ones who are truly in it for social change and willing to go the distance are few.
One thing is for sure — when the legions of unbanked, oppressed, and previously discarded come into crypto and embrace decentralization, it’s not going to be all love, peace, and wagmi on the blockchain.
If you want a preview of what that will look like, see the Occupy Wall Street movement of 2011.
That’s when the deepest seeds of web3 were planted.
Remember, web3 is born of culture and expressed through tech.
You can’t solve one without solving for the others
King knew that racism, poverty, and war were cut from the same cloth. Unless all could be solved, none would be solved.
This is the reason he gave one of his most famous speeches about the Vietnam war at a time when many of his supporters wanted him to focus on issues only in the US.
It’s why he traveled the globe and embraced diversity in thought from leaders around the world in attempts to help solve a seemingly unsolvable.
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”, King famously said.
He went on to say, “we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
It really does take a village.
