A Promise Lives Within You Now

(For the day after….keep the Dream alive – promoted by buhdydharma )

As we honor Martin Luther King Jr., it is also fitting to honor the unknown men and women across America who shared his dream and took a stand for justice and equality in the 1960’s.  A promise lived within them, a promise of justice and equality in a land of injustice and prejudice.  They believed in that promise and redeemed it with their courage, determination, and sacrifice.            

We will never know their names, but they deserve remembrance and gratitude too, for even the most inspiring leaders can accomplish nothing if people like you and me do not transform inspiration into real change in our own lives, in our own families, in our own neighborhoods, and in our own communities.  Leaders talk the talk, it’s up to us to walk the walk.                

During the civil rights movement of the ’50s and ’60s, many courageous Americans fought for justice and equality in the face of hostile resistance.  Among the bravest of them were a small group of men and women who boarded a bus in May of 1961 and headed south in the name of freedom.  With nothing but idealism, courage, and their belief in justice to shield them from harm, these Freedom Riders rode into racist Alabama to show Alabamans what human dignity looks like.  

Human dignity was not welcome in Montgomery, where the Freedom Riders were met by a mob armed with chains, lead pipes, and hammers.  They were badly beaten and their bus was firebombed:

Human beings can be beaten, buses can be firebombed, but human dignity cannot be beaten or firebombed into submission by racists or anyone else.  The ordeal of the Freedom Riders awakened the conscience of America:

The Freedom Rides were a central part of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s that fought to win equal rights for African Americans. It was a bloody and difficult battle. It was fought on one side by policemen and private citizens who used dogs, fire hoses, guns, and burning crosses. It was fought on the other side by protesters who used marches, songs, signs, and nonviolence.  It was a battle the Freedom Riders helped win.

Today, we are in another battle that must be won.  It is being fought on one side by cynical men of immense wealth and global power, armed with corporate media lies, corrupt politicians, massive illegal surveillance, and a war profiteering weapons industry that thrives on death and destruction.      

It is being fought on our side by Americans who believe in the promise within us, the promise of democracy, the promise enshrined in We the People.  

This battle is being waged every day across America, on Capitol Hill, in the courts, and over the airwaves.  It is being fought on the presidential campaign trail, in every newspaper, and over the Internet.  It must be won and it will be won, but the inciters of hatred and destruction are much stronger now than they were in 1961.  They control the government and are no longer content to just firebomb buses, they firebomb entire cities now:

They are “robbers of the world, having by their universal plunder exhausted the land, they rifle the deep. If the enemy be rich, they are rapacious; if he be poor, they lust for dominion; neither the east nor the west has been able to satisfy them.  To larceny, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire; they make a desert and call it peace.”  

As Tacitus condemned the Caesars of Rome, so the modern day Caesars of Washington and Wall Street stand condemned.  Universal plunder is their creed.  These robbers of the world are targeting Teheran now for firebombing, larceny, slaughter, and plunder:

The Caligula’s of Washington and Wall Street have been “warning” Americans every 10 minutes that Teheran is infested with bloodthirsty evildoers plotting to annihilate us and conquer the world.  They don’t want Americans to look at photos like this and notice that Teheran looks a lot like Chicago. They don’t want Americans to get silly notions in their heads that the men, women, and children who live in such a beautiful city must be a lot like they are.  Americans might start to wonder why Bush and Cheney are being such warmongering assholes. They might finally figure out who’s a threat to world peace and who isn’t.              

We have to keep awakening the conscience of America.  We are the Freedom Riders of today.  We are the leaders we’ve been waiting for.  We are the ones who are going to have to walk the walk if we are ever going to see that Promised Land Martin Luther King Jr believed America can be.  

May it be . . .

The promise of democracy lives within you now.

Believe . . . and you will find your way.

Believe . . . and America will find her way.