Forty years ago on August 28, Doctor King delivered his immortal "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, site of the coalition rally last Saturday, and the point of the one hundred plus organizations was not so much commemoration as the challenges posed by the present reactionary takeover and what we can do to reverse the damage before all of the gains made since 1963 are lost. Now is the time to "walk the walk," as did the 2003 poor people's march. We have "talked the talk" to the fullest extent of eloquence and range our language affords. The next fifteen months are crucial to the future of freedom and equality. Prominent civil rights activists present, addressing the integrated crowd from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, included Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King III, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Dick Gregory, among others. Also in attendance was the Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean, though he did not speak. He has scheduled a rally in New York City on Tuesday, August 26, as part of his Sleepless Summer Tour, "a rally to take our country back."
The Reverend Ron Daniels, Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, began the rally and introduced the three leaders of the hip-hop generation who were key organizers of this rally and to whom would be entrusted future activist endeavors to recover our lost democratic legacy: the Reverend Markel Hutchins, president of National Youth Connection, Inc.; Malika Sanders, president of the 21st Century Youth Leadership Movement, Inc.; and Mark Thompson, human rights activist and WOL radio talk show host. Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton spoke of the need for full state rights for the District of Columbia, in that they pay the same taxes as the rest of us and fight the same wars but suffer inadequate representation.
"We hope you all take home freedom from here, where Congress acts as unelected czars to nullify the local will".Leave us some freedom, too!" she said.
Interfaith invocations were offered by Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, and Muslim clergy. The press that day was well represented, with CSPAN filming and Reuters, TBS, a Japanese station, and a plethora of independents apparent, among others.
The keynote speaker of the day was Martin Luther King III, head, as his father was, of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). He recalled for the crowds that the 1963 March on Washington had been initiated by organized labor, that his father was more than a dreamer; that his immortal eighteen-minute speech dwelled on the "bad check this country gave to the Negro". His dream existed not just in eloquent speaking; he was a man of action; he also walked the walk, from Montgomery to Memphis for civil rights and ultimately human rights," King continued. "His dream was a challenge to the nation he loved".Today we are here to accept that challenge.
"People of color are denied their fair share of education and employment in our society," he said. "There are still incidents of racial violence. We must end oppression in the criminal justice system, end discriminatory persecution, abolish racial profiling and the death penalty; provide social and economic decency for all Americans. Too many people, 44 million, are living under the poverty line. The just community includes all people.
"44 million people have no health insurance," he went on. "And more don't have it to cover serious illness. The White House should cover every person and every illness." King then enumerated further crucial shortcomings of the present administration: "killing and bombing innocent women in the name of instituting freedom and democracy; air and water pollution, crucial health concernspollution that is no great respecter of political boundaries; senior citizens ripped off of retirement assets by corrupt corporations; lesbians and gays still subjected to persecution, discrimination, and violence. "Homophobia, a form of fear and hatred, has no place in this country," he said.
"We have a right to protest unwise economics and unsound foreign politics," continued King. "We should put hundreds of thousands to work to build nonpolluting mass transit systems." He further alluded to the gargantuan debts owed by Latin American countries and the Africans who must pay 30 percent of their national budgets on debt. "The IMF and World Bank should cancel the debts of the poorest nations," he said.
Focusing back on problems in this country, he continued, "A revolution is also needed at the ballot boxes in this country; only 38 percent voted in 2002. True election reform begins with voter turnout." King envisioned a fifteen-month rolling mobilization to register voters to produce the largest possible turnout, increasing the present level by 10 to 15 percent: "create a political earthquake to refocus the government on human needs. He then quoted his father: 'A voteless people is a powerless people.'"
On the issue of women, King noted that although 52 percent of the population comprises women, the ratio of women in Congress is only 14 percent. "The needs of women and children are neglected to subsidize tax cuts. We need more women at the 2004 polls," he continued. "Women shouldn't try to be like men. They should provide a different kind of leadership."
King envisioned "a new birth of a new American and a new world, in which we live together in peace and harmony. God has already blessed America. Now it is time for us to bless God."
King concluded by quoting his father's famous words "Justice will roll down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream." He ended by alluding to a Margaret Mead pronouncement: "The journey begins with a few steps; it takes a few to create change."
"This day would not be possible without Coretta Scott King," continued Malika Sanders. Mrs. King began by recalling, "Forty years ago today I looked around at the largest nonviolent demonstration in history." Today's demonstration she qualified as "the most diverse nonviolent demonstration ever held in the nation's capital."
Having heard her husband quoted by speakers and writers from all over the world, she continued, bemoaning the "bounced check" written to her people, a motif introduced and sustained in the 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech. "We refuse to believe there are insufficient funds in that great vault [read: the U.S. treasury]. We bring the same cries for world peace: 'there can be no peace without justice, no justice without peace.' We must meet physical force with soul force.
"Nonviolence must become the foundation of America's foreign policy," she said. "Let us not be intimidated by those who criticize our dissent. If peace is our goal, then nonviolence must be our way.
"Let us dare to dream of a peace humanity has never known," she concluded. "No hunger, decent shelter, education, and health care. When arms are replaced by renewal, we will light the way to the end of the nightmare of poverty."
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