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Thursday, March 28, 2024

I HAVE A DREAM (SLIGHT RETURN)

Courtesy of ZeroHedge. View original post here.

Submitted by williambanzai7.

Last year, on the occasion of Martin Luther King Day, I was asked

by several readers to re-write Dr Martin Luther King’s famous speech

in a parody attack on Wall Street. I declined for a number of

important reasons, reverence for Dr King being one, the risk of hyperbole being the

other.

Now, following the events of the past year, I no longer feel it is hyperbole to update

his speech to match the current state of national/economic affairs.

I do not mean to trivialize the original goals of the civil rights movement.

However, I believe that the problem of racial injustice in the United

States has further morphed into something different yet similar but equally nefarious: corruption driven economic injustice.

Moreover, I don’t think I need remind everyone that

Americans of color happen to be bearing the full brunt of the current

economic crisis, what is now being called by many the “Great Depression II.”

The measure of any epic historic document or speech is its timelessness, its ability to remain relevant and meaningful through the tides of time.

It is in this spirit that I have

modified the speech and would urge you to first relisten to Dr King’s

original speech as I have, and

consider what has changed and how the speech remains relevant as

ever to each and every one of us.

It is remarkable how little needed to be changed.

I HAVE DREAM (SLIGHT RETURN)

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as

the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

In 1776, the founding fathers, in whose symbolic shadows we stand

today, signed the Declaration of Independence. This momentous decree

came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Americans who had

been seared in the flames of withering political and economic

injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their

political and economic captivity.

But almost 250 years later, ordinary Americans are still not

free. Two hundred and fifty years later, the life of ordinary Americans is sadly

crippled by the manacles a government that is operating under the credo “by the corporation

for the corporation”,  rather than “by the people for the people.” 

Two hundred  and fifty years later, countless

Americans are living in a lonely island of poverty, struggling to

get by on government handouts, in the midst of a vast ocean of obscene prosperity in many instances subsidized by their government.

Two hundred  and fifty years later, Men women and

children of all color are languishing in the corners of a

privileged society controlled by the few and find themselves an economic exile

in their own land. And so we’ve come here today to dramatize a

shameful condition.

In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When

the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the

Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a

promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note

was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would

be guaranteed the “unalienable Rights” of “Life, Liberty and the

pursuit of Happiness.” It is obvious today that America has defaulted

on this promissory note. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation,

Washington DC together with it’s financial enablers on Wall Street,

have given the American people a bad

check, a check which has come back marked “Too Big To Fail.”

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We

refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great

vaults of economic opportunity of this nation. And so, we’ve come to cash this

check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of opportunity and the security of economic justice.

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the

fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of

cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is

the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to

rise from the dark and desolate valley of “moral hazard” to the sunlit

path of creative capitalism. Now is the time to save our nation from the

quicksands of chronic bailouts and “Too Big to Fail” to the time

proven solid rock of

creative destruction and economic opportunity. Now is the time to make

economic justice a

reality for all of our children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the

moment. This sweltering summer of economic discontent will not pass

until there is an invigorating autumn of transparent economic growth

and opportunity. Nineteen sixty-three was not an end, but a beginning. And

those who hope that it was just the Negro who needed to blow off steam

and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation

continues to allow Wall Street and much of corporate America to operate “business as usual.”

And there

will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until Americans are

returned their citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will

continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day

of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the

warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process

of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful

deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking

from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our

struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not

allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again

and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical

force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which is engulfing America

must not lead us to a distrust of all wealth, for many of our successful brothers in business, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come

to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they

have come to realize that their economic success is inextricably bound to our success.

We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.

We cannot turn back.

There are those who are asking, “When

will you be satisfied?”

We can never be satisfied as long as outspoken Americans

are the victims of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality.

We can

never be satisfied as long as our country continues to be pillaged by greed and corruption.

We cannot be satisfied as long as Americans individually and as a people are

forced to struggle under the chains of unsustainable debt.

We can

never be satisfied

as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of

their dignity by pepper spraying goons protecting signs stating: “Keep

of the Grass.”

Not only can we not be satisfied as long as a Negro in

Mississippi cannot vote but equally as long as an ordinary person on Main

Street USA is forced to accept that his worth less than those in the

privileged club of Wall Street billionaires.

No, no, we are not

satisfied, and we

will not be satisfied until “justice rolls down like waters, and

righteousness like a mighty stream.”

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials

and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells.

And some of you have come from areas where your quest — quest for

economic freedom and opportunity left you battered by the storms of

persecution and staggered

by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of

creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned

suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama,

go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana,

go back to downtown New York City, Oakland, Boston, Detroit and LA and

the rotting housing tracts of California, Ohio, Massachusetts, Nevada, Florida and Arizona, knowing

that somehow this situation can and will be changed.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I

still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the

true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident,

that all men, not corporations or banks but men, are created equal.”

I have a dream today!

And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring

from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city,

we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black

men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will

be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro

spiritual:

Free at last! Free at last!

Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

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