Martin Luther King Jr. Day

[Jennifer5]

At least in my opinion, when it comes down to the core reason of celebration... to me, this is the very best holiday! A man truely worthy of admiration, a man who had a dream, and in the end gave, his life trying to pursue that dream, a dream that one day all men would be equal and judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1732754907698549493

March on Washington, August 28, 1963... 250,000 people, a quarter of a million people, showed for this moment that will forever be remembered in history. Little did the nation know, that less then 5 years later, this great man would be shot and killed in Memphis Tennessee, and little did this nation know, that this man for whom so many hated back not so long ago and whom even today some do not admire, that this man, this one man, will forever be remembered for the change made by him and and so many others.

Last year, my sister memorized the entire 'I have a dream' speech, and I hope to do the same someday, but my memory just isn't as good as hers is. I think I can safely say, no matter how many times you have heard that speech... if you truely listen to his words, they will touch your heart. :love: Listen to this speech over and over again it never fail to amaze me at least.


ps (if you're unable to listen to the speech in the link above...) http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/treatise/king/mlk01.htm (I think that's the whole speech, but I don't know, I didn't read it through this time) also, if you can, somehow watch 'Citizen King', it's amazing! http://www.amazon.com/Citizen-King-Martin-Luther/dp/B0006Z2L5G/sr=1-1/qid=1168856812/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-8819932-6300635?ie=UTF8&s=dvd (I don't know of anyway it could be watched online it's nearly 2 hours, but if at all possible, it's worth the money)

[Dash]

Here are some quotes from Martin Luther King's 1967 sermon "A Time to Break Silence" which I've been working through all weekend:

"....and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such."

"...and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today--my own government."

"Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over."

"They must see Americans as strange liberators."

"The only change came from America as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept and without popular support. All the while the people read our leaflets and received promises of peace and democracy--and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs..."

"They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one "Vietcong"-inflicted injury. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. The see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers."

"What liberators!"

"Now there is little left to build on--save bitterness. Soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call fortified hamlets."

The full sermon is available here:
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/058.html

[Dash]

Some more from the same sermon:

"Perhaps only his sense of humor and of irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor weak nation more than eight thousand miles away from its shores."

"...the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy and the secure while we create a hell for the poor."

"Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours."

"This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words: Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism."