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Equality 2012 – The Martin Luther King’s Dream Project.
In memory of Martin Luther King Jr., seems we, once again, need to re-invigorate our commitment to equality; to guarantee that all people are safe, free, equal and protected by law as individuals, in community, at home and at work.
Each year we remember and restate the amazingness of MLK’s boldness, his vision, and his capacity to inspire a movement that has forever bettered the world. And yet, 40+ years later, we are still not equal.
Fact. Women throughout world are considered second to third class citizens. Read anything from Eve Ensler and you will be overwhelmed by the statistics of women being abused, raped, genitally mutilated, and inflicted voiceless to these crimes. Read these facts and you will know, we are not equal.
Or look at the ridiculous amount of energy spent demonizing Gay people. That Gay people are perceived more villainess and despicable than those who brutalize women is beyond comprehension. Isn’t it vulgar that gay people are sentenced to death and those who commit atrocities against women go without punishment. Again, read Eve Ensler. I can’t count the number of election cycles where the GOP platform has focused more energy on squashing Gays, squashing Love (as Gay has been renamed Love), then focusing on the issues. If kids weren’t taking their lives over this and countries around weren’t killing people for who they love (that’s right Uganda, I’m talking to you), I’d be laughing over the absurdity of it. Yet it’s a fact, we are not equal.
And then in America, we have bands of people who deny our President is an American citizen because of his name, because of his color, because of his father’s nationality. This is not representative of the progress Dr. King led us to. This reminds us of the fact that we are not equal and that too many of our citizens think that’s okay.
So the Dream remains one of equality. Of civility. Of understand that we are a melting pot of differences and that this is the beauty of being human. That have the ability to recognize both likeness and differences in one another and that’s okay. We can choose to celebrate this rather than demonize it. It comes down to one simple idea, a choice, which are we going to choose, to love or to fear? As Martin Luther King Jr. preached on November 17, 1957 “Men must see that force begets force, hate begets hate, toughness begets toughness. And it is all a descending spiral, ultimately ending in destruction for all and everybody. Somebody must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate and the chain of evil in the universe. And you do that by love”.
And so, with that, equality begets equality.
Word Swap: Gay will now be known as Love.
When I read that Tennessee is considering a law that basically allows bullying in schools under the guise of a religious umbrella, I had a thought. What if we substituted the word ‘gay’ for ‘love’? In this case, the current headline of “Tennessee Anti-Bullying Law Change Could Allow Students To Speak Out Against Gays For Religious Reasons: Report” more...
The Price of the Bully Pulpit
(aka the price we pay to get candidates elected). Each election year my stomach lining thins a bit more. Perhaps it’s the nausea I feel from politicians’ lack of candor. It could be gas from the disgraceful way candidates portray one another and the holier-than-thou way they portray themselves. Or maybe it’s the bloating from the ridiculous price tag that more...
Formerly OCCUPIED
I keep thinking about the images from Katrina of flood-ravaged houses tagged by FEMA as a means to convey a home searched and the number of occupants found either dead or alive. I keep thinking a similar type tagging should happen on foreclosed homes, representing the American dream soured. A tagging to illustrate how homeowners have vanished and which bank is now more...
We, the Job Creators…
When I found out Starbucks was launching the Create Jobs for USA campaign I was both horrified and thrilled. Horrified because I have been working on Job AID America, a disaster-relief fundraising campaign for clean energy job creation, in my spare time since November 2010 and I had a brief moment of idea possessiveness. Yet I was thrilled because Starbucks has the more...
