Each year we remember and restate the amazingness of MLK’s boldness, his vision, his capacity to inspire a movement that 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 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 the ridiculous amount of energy spent demonizing Gay people.  That Gay people are perceived more villainess and despicable than those who brutalize women (who to frequently commit atrocities 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 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.

So 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 we can recognize both the likeness and differences in one another.  And we can choose to celebrate them rather than demonize them.  It comes down to one simple idea, a choice, and 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.

Think about it, gay bashing would be love bashing.  Anti-gay sentiment would be anti-love sentiment.  Gay revulsion expressed by the likes of GOP candidate Santorum (google his name) or no longer candidate Bachman would become a complete disdain of love.  When candidate Santorum told the New York Times in 2005 that gay marriage threatens his marriage, in our new word swap world, what he was really saying is that love threatens his marriage.

Seems like an effective tool to level a discriminatory playing field and to more accurately brand what we’re talking about which, is love by the way.

In my utopia (which, by the way, would be unbelievably fun and valued with truth, compassion, opportunity, service and travel) running for office would be about the facts, not attacks.

Every candidate would have a soapbox, literally a milk crate, that they traveled with across the country.  At each campaign stop, the candidate would carry their milk-crate to the center of town, step on top, perhaps even standing side by side with their opponent, making their case, debating, answering questions, without bells and whistles, simply perched on top of their soapbox, face to face with their constituents.

The press would air these events live.  Citizens would record and post on the Internet.  News journals would post the complete transcripts.  And instead of making stump speeches to raise money, politicians would be forced to focus on the issues.

All that money not raised is money saved, money that can go back into the economy or be allotted for other things like the education, creating jobs, you know…things that add real value.  That and my indigestion would be obsolete.

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 the proud and uncompromising owner of yet another families grounding.

As of November 2011, 1 out of every 579 homes owned went into foreclosure and banks reported profits of 35.3 billion dollars.  Yet, business is slow.  We could boost their business, with a little flexibility from them.  Banks could keep Americans in their home, Americans paying their mortgages, at a lower interest rate.  Seems better than no mortgage at all.  Or, if not, perhaps we tag the foreclosed homes, illustrating the victims of a crisis that is just as destructive as Katrina and call it BoA, Chase, Citibank, Wells Fargo…

Job creation is not a trivial task.  Depending on who you talk to (or read), creating a single job costs anywhere from $90,000 – $280,000.  I have no idea why it’s so expensive and because it is, we need to raise hundreds of billions of dollars. 126,000 new jobs need to be created every month for five years to reduce unemployment to its typical 5%.  That’s a lot of job creation that need funding.

Sounds daunting when you break it down, yet it’s not, because job creation begets job creation. By kick-starting the process, by funding businesses and projects with growth potential, these businesses and projects will naturally create more jobs.

Starbucks is raising funds for Opportunity Finance Network, which is providing small business loans to businesses who the banks aren’t funding. Job AID America focus is raising funds for clean energy projects. Regardless of strategy, one thing is clear to me, that We The People are also We The Job Creators.

What could be more rewarding, more giving, more thoughtful this holiday season and beyond then supporting Americans and America by creating jobs.