President Obama will visit New London Wednesday to deliver this year’s graduation address at the Coast Guard Academy. Since his last visit four years ago, events in Ferguson, New London, New York, Baltimore and other cities around the country have heightened awareness that the hope of being in a post-racial society is a dream deferred.

On April 4, 1967 -- a year to the day before his assassination -- the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his  "Declaration of Independence from the War in Viet Nam" address at Riverside Church in New York City. In that address he stated, “When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

The “giant triplets” continue to be entwined with one another both at home and abroad. At home, the Department of Homeland Security has given police departments around the country $587 million for tanks, military rifles, drones, surveillance cameras and military training. As a sign at a recent witness at the U.S. Navy Submarine Base in Groton said, “If the police become an army, who is the enemy?”

“To serve and protect” -- thereby showing that “Black Lives Matter” -- needs to be demonstrated strongly in all neighborhoods and police stations regardless of the color of the neighbors or the color of the police force.

Abroad, U.S. policy uses lethal force with devastating effects on people of color. Although most American men and women in uniform have returned home from both Iraq and Afghanistan, the killings continue through air strikes and drone strikes. A new report from the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War estimates the “war on terror” in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan has been responsible for a minimum of 1.3 million deaths and possibly as many as 2 million. It is particularly distressing to note that President Obama is directly responsible for extra-judicial drone attacks.

In addition to these deaths through conventional weapons, weapons manufacturers in this country are benefiting from the $348 billion that the Obama administration has budgeted for nuclear weapons’ development over the next 10 years. Each day, $95 million a day is spent on new bombers, intercontinental ballistic missiles, increased production of nuclear materials, and the submarines that are built right here in our community. President Obama’s commitment, made when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, has been on display in the effort to achieve an accord in Iran. But, who is going to help the United States eliminate its decaying nuclear weapons and cancel the next generation of such weapons?

An inappropriately militaristic response has also been on display here at home on our borders. Hundreds of thousands of people who have come to our country fleeing violence and seeking a better life have been detained and deported by the Obama administration. Since 9/11, the nation has spent more than $100 billion trying to secure the US-Mexico border, much of this going to military contractors. The people — economic refugees from Central and South America — continue to risk everything to come to this country, including children at record rates. The money paid out to hold them in a hodgepodge of about 250 detention facilities is at an annual cost to taxpayers of more than $1.7 billion.

In his Riverside address Dr. King said, “We have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation.” As President Obama recently said in Selma, “Our march is not yet finished.” Coordinated work on the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism must be engaged at local, national and international levels if our humanity -- spiritually and literally -- is to stand any chance at all of survival. 

Anne Scheibner lives and works at St. Francis House in New London. She has been part of the Southeastern Connecticut Peace and Justice Network since its inception following 9/11.