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"We miss you, Martin."
Dear Doctor Martin Luther the King:
Well, another birthday has come and gone, and I hope you’re smiling, because your Dream is, indeed, becoming Reality. It has been 38 years since you left us, and the movement that you gave your life for is on its last legs. Politicians, preachers and teachers give lip-service to Civil Rights, while looking for the bottom line - taking dollars under the table, on the barrelhead and from behind the 8-ball - selling out their constituencies, their congregations and their students without shame. Your children are fighting over your legacy, and the Center dedicated to you is about to become another Ward of the State.
Today, in San Antonio, there was a wonderful celebration in your name. Thousands of people, young and old, black, white and brown, showed up to celebrate your legacy, to bring the nation’s attention to the plight of those who still lack equality, who still lack the capability and the opportunity to take advantage of the bounteous offerings which this country possesses. Offerings that still reflect the racial divide, and that still resist the natural propensity of human beings to come together, to become one in search of a better life.
While people in San Antonio were laughing and singing, in Dallas, the celebration was more about booty-shaking bands than it was about you. And in New Orleans, which is still feeling the deprivations of Hurricane Katrina, there was actual shooting on the ground. Violence, on the day set aside in your name, the name of a Man of Peace. May Lord have mercy upon our souls.
I don’t know how we’re going to get out of this mess, but it is apparent how we got in it. You were a Prophet indeed, Sir. You saw what was coming. When you announced your Poor People’s March on Washington D.C. in the attempt to unite poor black people and poor white people in an assault upon privilege and the concentration of wealth in the hands of the wealthy and their sycophants, you knew that they would come after you. You knew that they would realize that you knew exactly what you were doing, that you knew exactly what would happen if you went there, if you overstepped your nigger bounds and actually tried to make a real difference.
Just like they did with John Kennedy and, later, with little brother Bobby and the Prince of Blackness himself, Malcolm X, aka El Hajj Malik el-Shabazz, change toward even the general direction of Equality is equal to a death knell, sounded upon the lonely hilltop in the center of that Shining City, echoing forlorn through the lonely, silent, white streets.
We miss you, Martin. We miss your great, great soul and your way with words. We know you weren’t perfect as we know we aren’t perfect, but beyond your battle with Self, you knew that posterity would record the Higher Truth which you espoused, and which resonated in tune with the highest truths available to Humanity, in this time or any other. So while we recognize how far we’ve come from realizing your dream, we also recognize that our time will come, that what is sown, shall be reaped, be it Positivity or Negativity, be it Karma or the Lord’s Justice raining down from the sword of Jesus on the day of the battle of Armageddon.
That fatal day may be more than just a metaphor, more than just an old story told to assuage the yearnings and desires of enslaved peoples across the span of time who had nothing during their lives, but who looked forward to resurrection on the Day of Judgment, that day when their tormentors and abusers will fall beneath their feet, bodies torn and bloody beneath the hooves of holy stallions and the swords of Angels, Prophets and the Faithful alike.
I know that you are out there - perhaps a dimensional portal or two distant - enjoying a front row seat as the Capitalists diffused your dream by destroying the Movement, employing the peons and enjoying the unrequited fruit of their depredations as the Middle Class withered away. They shattered stars in the attempt to stop the Time, but it can’t be stopped, and now, now, we are on the cusp of true change. They came for the Indians (is Native/Indigenous American really any better?) first, then the African-Americans (Black is definitely better), and now, the Caucasians (the elite subgroup within the vast ethnic tapestry that is, The White Race) are feeling the pangs of change, as the bastion of racial brotherhood is proven to be an illusion created to divide true brothers and sisters of the Cause, and divert attention from the true battle, which is more spiritual than physical. You knew it, the Prophets of Old foretold it, and we’re living it: things must get worse before they get better, and sho’ ‘nuff ‘fo God, things are getting worse.
But the light at the end of the tunnel only announces our arrival upon the cusp of a whole new Reality, beginning a whole new journey on a cycle that is beginning again, and has begun again and again, continuing, without end, taking consciousness further afield, exploring the unknown in variegated and sublime ways, through infinite eyes, all seeking omniversal evolution ever in progression, never-ending, eternal.
I hope that you’re smiling as people are dying, as the world is railing against the hegemony of Mankind. I hope you’re smiling as children continue to die; as the Cradle of Civilization is made unlivable for untold generations by depleted uranium; as laboratory-born genetic viruses diffuse across the surface of the Earth; as a dictatorial President assails even the appearance of true , representative Democracy in the only country in the world to proselytize the equality of One and All, even if it has never, in its history, accomplished this goal itself.
I hope you’re smiling, Dr. King. Because your Dream is indeed becoming, Reality.
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I enjoyed your reading on "city of the legends" with Aberjhani!!
Love Tinka