A perverse but not new expression of “state’s rights” is the notion that it is somehow objectionable to promote one’s beliefs in liberty and democracy not only in the state in which one is resident but also in some other state. Not long ago in his weekly column for Townall.com, Paul Jacob recalled how an activist of another era was subjected to a similar protectionist standard.

The Oklahoma law [to hamstring citizen initiative rights and jail the Oklahoma Three] is an effort to keep out any ideas the political bosses don’t want to see in “their” state. The lawsuit [contra the residency requirement for petition circulators] is now at the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Reading one of that case’s legal briefs brought to mind Martin Luther King’s famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” In 1963, King was jailed in Birmingham during a non-violent civil disobedience campaign. A group of eight ministers had criticized the effort as being “unwise and untimely.”

While in jail, King scribbled a response to those clergy in the margin of a newspaper, that began, “I think I should indicate why I am here In Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the view which argues against ‘outsiders coming in.’”

King said that he had indeed been invited to come, but went on to explain….

Paul then quotes from King’s letter:

I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their “thus saith the Lord” far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco-Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.