The Dream Must Not Die!

The Dream Must Not Die!
The Sad Irony of Today

Today, January 31, 2006, a heroine of my generation died and we are better for her life but weakened by her death. Coretta Scott King was a woman who faced the dogs, the hoses and the hatred of her homeland.
At the side of her husband, Dr. Martin Luther King, Coretta Scott King was her own person of courage and determination.
And sadly, on this same day, the Supreme Court has finally been filled with a majority of neo-conservative thinking in this country. Samuel Alito was sworn in as the newest Supreme Court Justice replacing Sandra Day O’Connor.
The impact of the “new Court” will likely be further destruction of the very types of programs and policies Coretta Scott King and Martin fought so valiantly to implement.
The “Dream” Martin spoke of seems so very distant again as we mourn the death of his wife and we wait for the inevitable from the Court.
The inevitable will be further restrictions of basic human rights, a likely over turn of a woman’s right to choose what she does with her body, a further endorsement of inhumane and illegal treatment of prisoners of war and prisoners detained without charges and the continued bias toward corporate interests over the interests of the weak and poorest of our nation.
The Bush agenda has come to fruition and my sons’ and my grandchildren’s generations will pay for our neglect in choosing leaders and standing up for their rights.
They will pay on the bloody battlefields of incomprehensible wars started to embellish power and greed. They will pay in healthcare and social programs lost to outsourcing, failed unions and the costs of continued violence and war.
I am old and weaker than the days of Martin and Coretta when the struggle of basic human rights took a dramatic turn for the better. I’m weak and feeble in the face of the tyranny that has beset us.
Tyranny of a return to hatred, continued racism, police brutality and loss of individual rights.
Tyranny of the masses failing to hold the criminals in power responsible for their crimes in foreign lands with bombs and missiles and here in this land with greed and abuse of power.
I’m old and weak but I also have nothing left to personally lose. I’ve been blessed to live this long in a country that has many, many blemishes but still it has been a beacon of hope.
Now that beacon has dimmed to almost darkness.
I’ve been part of the neglect that jeopardizes the younger generations. I’ve left them little as a legacy except despair and oppression.
So I must use the time I have left to make them a better world.
Dr. King’s dream must not die with the death of Coretta today. Dr. King’s dream must be reawakened for our children and our children’s children.
Marvin Gaye sang it in his most magnificent song, “Save the Children”. We must save the babies, save the children and save the dream.
Old and weak as I am, my life needs to be dedicated to reviving that dream in the continued struggle that Martin and Coretta worked so hard and heroically for. My generation needs to stand up to the tyranny and not allow the dream to be extinguished.
Like Martin, Coretta, Malcolm, Rosa, Cesar and Medgar we have to risk our lives to save our children and our babies. Actions to oppose can no longer be passive in nature and predominately white in population.
I, a white man, see the great need to join our brothers and sisters of all ancestries in a united struggle. I see a need for the rule of the European culture to end in our nation and the rule of the people to begin.
We need all the people of our nation to have a living wage, healthcare and freedom.
We need all our children to have a fair and balanced education that doesn’t omit the histories of 80% of the world’s cultures.
We need fair and equal justice for all our people with police forces that truly serve and protect.
All these things are part of the dream. The dream we fell in love with but have allowed to become just a dream.
Now is the time in history to make it real.

Terry Leichner, RN
Vietnam Veterans Against the War