"I Have A Dream" Today

[Anime Monster]

Martin Luther's King's "I Have A Dream" is the basis of this essay and, in my opinion, the best speech ever given.

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Every time I read or hear the Rev. King's speech tears come to my eyes and I want to climb to the highest height I can and cry out as loud as I can, "Free at last. Free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last."

But we are not free, to this day. Sure, everyone can vote without trouble and the place where you live decides what school you go to and no one forbids you you service on color, but that's a lie. There is a color that still matters in this great nation of America. If you have enough of it you are the King or Queen of the emerald fields, but if you do not, you are the surf, which is invisible to the Kings and Queens of America, which tends to the emerald fields of our "democracy."

That color is green.

Not the green of the beautiful emerald fields of the golf courses or the leaves that permeate in the endless summers of our beautiful cities. But the sickly, pale green of greed.

People used to say one was "green with envy," but the sin that took green and made it it's own silky, papery image was greed.

With greed's green you can have anything you want. From a pack of gum to the presidency and if you don't have greed's green your only right in this nation is to work to your dying breath to earn "enough" to survive another day of working. And only the "Godly" souls are helpful as much as they possibly can in such God-parched times.

Yet, it is never enough. People would like to believe that poverty is a place where one can live, not the best, but live and have the basic necessities of life of food on the table under a roof with a bed to sleep in and beds for your children. Poverty is not a place one can live. They are bound to vans and cars that our their homes and transportation to dead end jobs where they receive menial wages of a few dollars an hour for work with are more taxing than what their pay is.

And it's not only the black which are in the ghettos or the white in the suburbs. It's the Mexicans, the blacks, the white, the Asians, the Arabians, the Polynesians (and the people of the other south Pacific/Indian Ocean islands), and all the other groups of Americans living in the ghettos and suburbs of cities where home may be a cheap hotel or the projects.

So, "Free at last. Free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last."

[larien]

This piece - sadly - true. Unfortunately, as you said, people aren't able to realize that there is poverty all around us, and that these unfortunate people aren't in the situation they're in because of laziness, but because of misfortune andthe lack of morals at the heads of companies. Just recently, Walgreens was talking about slashing employee benefits, when most of these same employees are already living in absolute poverty, despite their "jobs."
It was really ingenious to use King's speech to show how enslaved we are by the money. It shows that another type of "racism" and segregation have developed in the country.

~Larien

[alanna]

it is soo true
i fully agree with the whole *Money racisim* thing and it is just getting worse.
LUV AL

[Anime Monster]

Thank you for your comments, larien and Al. And it gets worst for the exteme poor as "prosperity" increases as it drives up housing prices to the point where if they have a home then they are probably living with a large group of others, in dormatories, or working two or more jobs a week.