MONDAY was Martin Luther King Jr Day, a public holiday in America in honour of its namesake and this year it coincided with his birthday.

Best known over here for his ‘I have a dream’ speech (shortly after which he was gunned down) King is remembered as the leader of the American Civil Rights movement, in particular an advocate and pioneer of non-violent activism, characterised by one of his opponents as ‘action oriented Marxism!’ Put simply, he urged people to act to confront injustice in a peaceful way.

The day is now celebrated as a day of service to others. Many people use it to volunteer in their community – feeding the hungry, rehabilitating the homeless, tutoring those who can’t read, mentoring at-risk youngsters, consoling the broken-hearted and a thousand other projects to help build the community of his dream. The bold, forthright and direct challenges to injustice that characterised his life somewhat sanitised for mass consumption.

Dr King once said that we all have to decide whether we will ‘…walk in the light of creative altruism or the darkness of destructive selfishness’. One of life’s most persistent and nagging questions, he says, is “What are you doing for others?” The Holiday provides a unique opportunity for people to reflect on how they can fight evil, not people, and to ask themselves, “What is the most loving way I can resolve this conflict or injustice?”

A timely reminder of the sort of life and example of selfless living that at one time truly made America great.

This week we have seen the antithesis of that. The world rightly derides and decries Mr Trump’s most recent racist and xenophobic outburst – despite it being what we’ve come to expect.

What is a greater affront is the silence and collusion of others. The President’s words were exposed and corroborated by some who were there, while others claimed to have challenged him and called him out. The White House defended his ‘robust language’ while his political supporters and policy sympathisers mysteriously suffered collective amnesia, telling reporters that they couldn’t recall the exact words he used.

While many in the US used the national holiday to honour Dr King by doing their humble bit to end injustice through volunteering, a handful of their elected leaders ignore and collude with the very racism and bigotry that Dr King spent his life fighting. The evil is not that America has a president who is overtly racist (that was apparent before he was elected) but that many of those in power, through their failure to condemn, perpetuate and collude with it for their own political gain.

I’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating: ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing…’ We can all do something…