Wednesday, October 8, 2008

"I Have A Dream"

During a hot August in the summer of 1963 those immortal words were echoed from the Lincoln Memorial where Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke to a mass of Black, White, and diverse people speaking out for jobs and freedom. Many notables were there that day also, the Hon. John Lewis, House Representative from the 5th Congressional district of Georgia spoke as to the inequities of our society in labor, opportunity, and segregation.

Of what was said there on that day it is taught all too often that Martin's words were conciliatory and full of love for his fellow man, they were but in terms of social justice and equality. I direct your view to them, in context:

"...One hundred years later [since the Emancipation Proclamation], the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition."

Hardly seems dripping with the sweet syrup of love or forgiveness, but a open indictment of the failure of the American system to live up to its creed, and mission. To become the sole hope of humanity on the face of the Earth, allowing anyone to realize the fullness of their existence simply for the sake of their personal prosperity, as a benefit to humankind.

Yes, I said it. the sublime nature of the words "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Stating that humanity is not merely allowed by other men to be free, but by extension of the will of God is created free, with a free will, and the acts of men to confine the will of a free soul is to go against the very nature of God.

Bet you never thought of it that way, eh?

King goes further, saying "Those who hope that the Negro, needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual." Now change just one word, "Negro" to "unemployed", "underpaid", "disenfranchised", "homeless", "discriminated against", and you will see that the words I have a dream were not solely for Blacks in the U.S. but a forewarning of what was at hand.

When a government believes it can by its laws, and policies dis-engender an entire group of people by some unique trait, whether skin color, gender, sexual orientation, religion, national origin or for that matter whatever device man has used to separate one from another, and to cause discord by difference, and not unity by likeness. When this happens that same government perpetuates its control over its people, and the dissolution of their freedom which it is meant to protect.

It was said recently by one of our Honorable Representatives that people whose homes were foreclosed should not be allowed to vote. What!? So not only deny them shelter because of a lack of fiscal understanding, but deny them their civil right because of bad judgment after being misled.

The disenfranchised. And contrary to popular belief, the majority of folks who purchased homes which were more than which they could adequately pay for were not Black, Latino, or of any traditional ethnic background. The MAJORITY of foreclosures have occurred to Whites, young, and under-educated about the management of a mortgage as a business transaction.

My words:

In these days my heart is heavy, for many years ago I believed that at some point the truth may come out. In the disenfranchisement of an entire race and culture of people I saw it as a test, a social experiment of sorts. Some look at the term 'Conspiracy' and think of something sinister. But let us be careful of the context. Websters defines the word as " to act in harmony toward a common end."

This in itself is significant, for when the foundation for conspiracy has been laid, generations may pass by, plans laid into place are enacted, and the original designers of the plan have long been laid to rest. For a fish in a fishbowl never thinks of the water, until there is none left for it to breathe.

It's whole life it never realizes the condition that it exists in. The fish in a fishbowl knows not where it stands, it sees not its limitations, and has no idea at any moment, the cat may knock its whole world off its perch, and it find itself a meal for the hungry beast that selected its moment to strike. We are much the same way. For by our whole lives we have been told "how things are," and that "they shouldn't be this way, but they are."

But when in the course of our coming and going, our looking and finding, our purchasing and running out, and all the other priorities of life which we have been told are so essential to the daily course of life which we travel through did we ever ask, "Does it have to stay this way?"

The answer is as simple as anyone who would dare - "no." Our government has failed us, and turned the people against each other due to the accent of one's speech, the color of our skin, and the religious, cultural and nationalistic differences which have common ties in the melting pot of America.

No, do not misunderstand me, I am not saying in her Constitution, nor in her Declaration of Independence. But in the hearts of men who were appointed to safeguard her principles. Those who have betrayed her to profit, and gave her to ruin.

They were those who advocated the slave trade for the profit met on the backs of kidnapped peoples who helped them grow, and subsequently the country with them. And when some could benefit no longer from this, they sided with former enemies to dispatch that nation from the face of the earth.

They were those who desired the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, declared a terrorist organization in 1870 by a U.S. grand Jury, but praised by President Woodrow Wilson in 1912 when viewed through the lens of D.W. Griffith's "Birth of A Nation," portraying them as noble warriors on the side of America.

They were those who lynched over 3000 good-for-something black men in Georgia alone from 1869 until 1922 when Rep. LC. Dyer from Missouri proposed an anti-lynching bill which Warren G. Harding backed, but was defeated by filibuster in the Senate. Making lynching a federal crime, and mandated harsh punishments. The Senate formally apologized for this failing in 2005.

The fate of humanity hangs in the balance, and only we the people can stand to defeat the Goliath of disunity, discrimination, and dehumanization.

And now Sarah Palin in Florida, wearing the white of purity, accusing Barack Obama of being associated with a man who in his youth was a radical terrorist during a time of civil revolution in our country in the 1960's, but encouraged the crowd to use racial epithets and directly calling him a terrorist by saying nothing when the ugly face of racism rose.

The conspiracy was laid out a long time ago, we must now question the condition which its planning has created in our present day. The controllers of government, and by default, society must fail in furthering their controls over humanity, and true civilized society must prevail.

No comments: