Stopping Injustice
In “Letter from Birmingham Jail” Martin Luther King Jr. claims “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”. This statement is accurate because unfairness or wrongness done to one person or a group of people directly, affects all indirectly. In World War 2 Adolph Hitler wanted to clear Germany of all Jews and turn Germany into a communist country. The injustice that was happening in Germany was spreading across Europe. Eventually other countries like Italy and Russia were under the influence of communism. This injustice was spreading across Europe .
The United States found this to be unjust and had to interfere because they found this to be a threat to them. If there is injustice anywhere, there is an immense possibility of it spreading, thus affecting everyone and everywhere. Another example of this is the Gulf war. This war was between Iraq and an alliance organized by a number of countries. Iraq tried to take over a piece of Persia because of its rich oil supply. The United States sent a lot of support to Persia. Even though the US didn’t have anything to do with Persia but, they took the first step to defending Persia from Iraq.
They believed that a country’s borders should be respected and felt that if they did not get involved in stopping Iraq from invading Persia, and allowed this injustice to happen in Persia, the rest of the world might soon follow taking over other countries by force. So Iraq’s injustice to Persia was a threat to justice everywhere else in the world. A further example would be bullying in school. Bullying would be seen as injustice that goes on in schools. In the 4th grade, a teacher did not punish a student for hitting and making fun of another student.
The teacher should have stopped this injustice but because this student went free, other students started to bully the same student that had been bullied before and eventually bullying had spread across the school. In this case, injustice was not stopped in one classroom and eventually spread across the whole school. In these examples injustice was seen as a threat to others and was stopped, but when it wasn’t injustice spread and affected justice. These instances prove that Martin Luther King Jr. s quote is accurate.
