We Must Continue Moving Forward To Complete The Dream

On the 60th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech, President Joe Biden wrote the following:

Sixty years ago, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and hundreds of thousands of fellow Americans marched on Washington for jobs and freedom. In describing his dream for us all, Dr. King spoke of redeeming the “promissory note to which every American was to fall heir” derived from the very idea of America — we are all created equal and deserve to be treated equally throughout our lives. While we’ve never fully lived up to that promise as a nation, we have never fully walked away from it, either. Each day of the Biden-Harris administration, we continue the march forward.

That includes a fundamental break with trickle-down economics that promised prosperity but failed America, especially Black Americans, over the past several decades. Trickle-down economics holds that taxes should be cut for the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations, that public investments in priorities such as education, infrastructure and health care should be shrunk, and good jobs shipped overseas. It has exacerbated inequality and systemic barriers that make it harder for Black Americans to start a business, own a home, send their children to school and retire with dignity.

Vice President Harris and I came into office determined to change the economic direction of the country and grow the economy from the middle out and bottom up, not the top down. Our plan — Bidenomics — is working. Because of the major laws and executive orders I’ve signed — from the American Rescue Plan, the bipartisan infrastructure law, the Chips and Science Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, my executive orders on racial equity and more — we’re advancing equity in everything we do making unprecedented investments in all of America, including for Black Americans.

Black unemployment fell to a historic low this spring and remains near that level. More Black small businesses are starting up than we’ve seen in over 25 years. More Black families have health insurance. We cut Black child poverty in half in my first year in office. We are delivering clean water and high-speed internet to homes across America. We’re taking on Big Pharma to reduce prescription drug costs, such as making the cost of insulin for seniors $35 a month. We’re taking the most significant action on climate ever, which is reducing pollution and creating jobs for Black Americans in the clean energy future.

This administration will continue to prioritize increasing access to government contracting and lending. We awarded a record $69.9 billionin federal contracts to small, disadvantaged businesses in fiscal 2022. We’re taking on housing discrimination and increasing Black homeownership. To date, we’ve invested more than $7 billion in historically Black colleges and universities to prepare students for high-growth industries. We’ve approved more than $116 billion in student loan debt cancellation for 3.4 million Americans so that borrowers receive the relief they deserve. And a new student debt repayment planis helping Black students and families cut in half their total lifetime payments per dollar borrowed. We’re doing all of this by making sure the biggest corporations begin to pay their fair share, keeping my commitment that Americans earning less than $400,000 a year not pay a single penny more in federal taxes.

And to help guide these policies, I made it a priority to appoint Black leaders to my Cabinet, my staff, in the judiciary and to key positions in agencies such as the Federal Reserve to ensure policymakers represent the experiences of all Americans in the economy.

But we know government can’t do it alone. Private-sector leaders have rightly acted to ensure their companies are more reflective of America, often in response to their employees, their customers and their own consciences. Right now, the same guardians of trickle-down economics who attack our administration’s economic policies are also attacking the private sector and the views of the American people. A recent poll from the nonpartisan Black Economic Alliance Foundation shows overwhelming bipartisan support for promoting diversity as central to a company being more innovative and more profitable, and central to fulfilling the promise of our country for all Americans. Despite the attacks, we all must keep pushing to create a workforce that reflects America.

For generations, Black Americans haven’t always been fully included in our democracy or our economy, but by pure courage and heart, they have never given up pursuing the American Dream. We saw in Jacksonville, Fla., yet another community wounded by an act of gun violence, reportedly fueled by hate-filled animus. We must refuse to live in a country where Black families going to the store or Black students going to school live in fear of being gunned down because of the color of their skin. On this day of remembrance, let us keep showing that racial equity isn’t just an aspiration. Let us reject the cramped view that America is a zero-sum game that holds that for one to succeed, another must fail. Let us remember America is big enough for everyone to do well and reach their God-given potential.

That’s how we redeem the promissory note of our nation.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Had A Major Impact On The U.S.

The charts above are from a Pew Research Center survey -- done between April 10th and 26th of a nationwide sample of 5,073 adults, with a 1.7 point margin of error.

Dr. King's Message About White Moderates Is Still true

 

The two paragraphs above are from the letter Martin Luther King, Jr wrote from the Birmingham jail. He expresses his disappointment with white moderates. Sadly, his words are as true today as the day they were written. Racism will not be defeated without the involvement of whites. And that must include more than just white liberals. It must also include white moderates.

Conservatives Disingenuously Use MLK To Justify Racism

Conservatives hated Martin Luther King, Jr. They even tried to stop the holiday in his honor. But they're smart enough to realize that most people consider him a hero, so they have started to use him to justify their own racism and white supremacy. The either misquote him, or take his quotes out of context, but honesty is not one of their values.

The following is an op-ed by Jarvis DeBerry at MSNBC.com about this right-wing abomination by a Republican running for the Senate:

Josh Mandel, a conservative Republican and Marine veteran running for the U.S. Senate in Ohio, began running an ad this week that opens with an Ohio woman stating, “Critical race theory is crap!” before cutting to the candidate standing on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. That's the bridge where, in 1965, state troopers with clubs and tear gas set upon a group of voting rights activists led by a young John Lewis. Two weeks later, federal authorities stood guard as Martin Luther King Jr. led activists across.

Desecrating the site of one of the most spectacularly violent attacks on civil rights protesters by using it as a prop in an ad that denounces critical race theory was bad enough. But, then, in a move that was exponentially more audacious and disrespectful, Mandel accused Bernice King of being ignorant of her assassinated father’s politics.

The affront is a poignant example of the phoniness of conservatives’ invocations of Martin Luther King Jr. in their ongoing project to co-opt his legacy. It’s an example of the way white conservatives mention him not in any sincere effort toward racial healing or reconciliation but to feed other white conservatives’ insatiable desire to put Black people in their place.

“Martin Luther King marched right here,” Mandel says in the ad, “so skin color wouldn't matter.” Then the ad cuts to photos of Mandel, who is white, posing with Black Marines in Iraq during America’s unjustified occupation of that country. “I didn't do two tours in Anbar Province, fighting alongside Marines of every color, to come home and be called a racist,” he said. “There's nothing racist about stopping critical race theory and loving America.”

Then a voiceover comes in: “Josh Mandel — pro-God, pro-gun, pro-Trump.”

It dishonors the memories of Lewis and King to promote an agenda that will bring nothing but more harm to Black people at a site where they struggled for Black people’s advancement.

It’s also illogical to pick a site where the law was so violently used to hold back Black people to dismiss a discipline that investigates the innumerable ways the law has done just that. On top of that, King, who won a Nobel Peace Prize, abhorred war for its destructiveness and because, he said, money spent on war is money that doesn’t get spent helping the poor. Calling out his name in a proudly militaristic ad that idolizes guns and former President Donald Trump is an abomination.

And there’s no reason to believe that it wasn’t a calculated abomination. Because Mandel wasn’t done giving offense.

He posted the video to Twitter, tagged Bernice King and claimed that a visit to Atlanta’s King Center for Nonviolent Social Change, where King is CEO, had inspired his ad. When she correctly questioned his understanding of her father’s beliefs, the 44-year-old Mandel argued back that Martin Luther King Jr. “knew the importance of the Second Amendment” and told the 59-year-old Bernice King: “Study your history better.”

You won’t find any better evidence of the white American belief that Martin Luther King Jr. belongs to them, that he would approve of them more than he would approve of Black people and that white people, the authorities on what Martin Luther King Jr. believed, can invoke his name to scold Black people. Bernice King’s twitter feed is filled with such arrogance: Random people contradicting her about her father and arguing that he’d take their side, not hers.

Given that Bernice King politely corrected a tweet from Mandel in September when he equated supporting critical race theory to “stomping on the grave of Martin Luther King,” the probability that he tagged her Tuesday with a plan to talk down to her is about 100 percent. Because, in today’s Republican universe, being ugly and racist and disrespectful is celebrated as being the sign of a fighter. “You want a fighter,” Mandel says at the end of his ad, “send in a Marine.” Mandel used the “stomping on the grave of Martin Luther King” language in a March 13 interview, a full six months after the man’s daughter politely asked that he not “use my father or his grave to increase fear regarding CRT.”

After that September exchange with the candidate, Bernice King tweeted: “So many people who furiously and erroneously tell me what my father believed absolutely refuse to study his teachings beyond a few quotes. That’s very telling and extremely unfortunate.”

Bernice King didn’t have to explain where the loud and wrong get their quotes. Most of America knows only one part of one Martin Luther King Jr. speech: the unwritten, unplanned coda to the political manifesto he presented at the March on Washington in 1963. And many white people misinterpret that segment as his opposition to seeing or mentioning race. 

Be Like MLK - Accept Small Victories And Keep Fighting

 The following is an editorial by the editorial board of The Washington Post (published on MLK holiday):

On this Martin Luther King Jr. Day, it is perhaps more important than ever to recall King’s immortal expression of hope, a paraphrase of a 19th century abolitionist minister: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

King preached both urgency and patience — nonviolent perseverance in the face of fire hoses, dogs, beatings, lynchings. Every second of marginalization was intolerable. Yet it took a decade after King’s 1955 Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott for Congress to approve the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Enslaved Americans had been freed a century before. King did not lose hope. He kept working. He believed that most people feel compassion for their fellow human beings, even if it can take time for some to recognize themselves in others — and even more for this recognition to change minds.

Though the challenges today are different, it is increasingly hard to hold on to this hope and faith in each other. Compassion across political and social disagreements appears to be disappearing. Abhorrent beliefs are hardening rather than softening. Americans increasingly refuse to venture outside their bubbles — physical and virtual zones of the like-minded that are filled with varying amounts of misinformation.

Thus, a once-in-a-century pandemic is exacerbated by people who refuse to accept miracle vaccines and the politicians who pander to them. A disturbingly large number of voters, concentrated on the right, now believe that anti-democratic violence is acceptable. And, most important for King’s legacy, the political system is failing to protect the voting rights of minorities in the United States.

The Supreme Court in 2013 gutted the Voting Rights Act. Republican-run states have since passed waves of laws that are designed to make voting harder, with a disproportionate impact on minority communities. There was once a bipartisan commitment in Congress to protect all Americans’ voting rights. Now, Republicans block bills that would impose modest minimum standards for voting access and they balk at efforts to repair the Voting Rights Act they once overwhelmingly supported.

King would not have lost hope. He would have kept working. “The road ahead is not altogether a smooth one. There are no broad highways that lead us easily and inevitably to quick solutions. But we must keep going,” he declared in Montgomery in 1965.

It is crucial to seize every opportunity for progress, even if it feels small and insufficient in the moment. Senate Republicans are poised to block voting access bills this upcoming week, and Democratic holdouts refuse to change the chamber’s rules to ease their passage. But some have expressed interest in insulating the election process from partisans who would subvert the results. As important as enabling Black Americans to vote is ensuring that their votes are counted over the objections of those seeking to label their ballots illegitimate.

If there is an opportunity to make even a small amount of progress, leaders of conscience must seize it. Then they should redouble their efforts — in towns, cities, counties, states, the courts and Congress — to do more. King’s hope for the future was not an invitation for complacency. The arc of the moral universe will not bend itself.

The Dream Of MLK, Jr. Has Not Been Fulfilled In America

In 1963, during the March on Washington, Martin Luther King gave a speech that is not remembered as one of the great oratorical moments in U.S. history. In that speech, he said:

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day down in Alabama with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day right down in Alabama little Black boys and Black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today.

That was a wonderful dream. And a couple of years later, it seemed like America was on the way to seeing the dream fulfilled. In the mid to late 1960's, President Johnson pushed three civil rights bills through Congress and signed them into law. Then we saw voting rights bills passed with majorities of both parties. And in 2008, the nation elected its first Black leader -- President Barack Obama.

Obviously, much progress had been made, and many in the country assumed the progress would continue. But that assumption has proved to not be accurate. The progress toward equality scared a lot of racists and white supremacists, and sadly, they numbered in the millions. They had taken control of the Republican Party, and while too many voters stayed home on Election Day, they were able to elect one of their own to be president.

This emboldened them to come back out in the open. Violence against minorities became more common -- both in the police and in the public at large. This could have been fixed, but Republicans on both the state and national level, following the wishes of their orange demagogue, blocked efforts to protect rights and lives.

Then, after losing the 2020 election, the GOP racists began to pass laws to suppress the voting rights of many Americans -- especially people of color. Most of this occurred in red states, but it was protected by Republicans in the national government. Their dream is to reinstate their white supremacist leader (Donald Trump).

Progress is no longer being made towards assuring equality of all Americans. In fact, it seems like we are regressing. But regressing or just standing still, one thing is certain -- Dr. King's dream has not been realized in the United States, and there are many determined to keep that dream from being fully realized.

This should be unacceptable to all who believe in the American Dream, and Dr. King's dream. We must rededicate ourselves to achieving equality for all Americans in all areas of our society.

Most Say MLK's "I Have A Dream" Speech Is Still Relevant

The chart above reflects the results of the new Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between January 8th and 11th of a nationwide sample of 1,500 adults (including 1,258 registered voters). The margin of error for adults is 2.8 points, and for registered voters is 3.0 points. 

It is just a few days before the MLK Jr Holiday. You Gov found that most Americans consider his "I Have A Dream" speech to still be relevant in today's United States.

Today We Honor A Hero (But Not The Only Black Hero)

Today is the official holiday to honor a great American -- a real hero of this country. Martin Luther King, Jr. dedicated his life to make this a better country for all of its citizens, and it is only right to honor him with a holiday. But he is not alone.

Sadly, when asked to name Black men and women who are American heroes, too many Whites would struggle to name anyone but Dr. King. That is a tragic failure of our educational system.

The truth is that there are many Black men and women who have made heroic contributions to this country throughout its history. Let me name just a few -- Crispus Attucks, Frederick Douglass, Malcom X, John Lewis, Andrew Goodman, Fannie Lou Hamer, Medgar Evers, Angela Davis, James Farmer, Barbara Jordan, Shirley Chisholm, Huey P. Newton, W.E.B. DuBois, George Washington Carver, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman.

I could go on, because there are many others. But I think you get my point. Blacks have a rich and proud history in the United States, and their service and sacrifice to their fellow man have made this a better country for all Americans. That makes them heroes in my eyes.

It would do my fellow Whites well to study some real American history -- not just White history. We would not be the free and democratic nation we love without the contributions of Blacks (and other non-whites).

Race Relations Is Still A Big Problem In The United States

Today marks a holiday dedicated to one of the many civil rights heroes -- Martin Luther King, Jr. (and I believe he would have been the first to say it should be a day in which we honor all of those who put their lives and freedom on the line for civil rights).

I think it is also a day on which we need to examine the problem of race relations in the United States. Have those problems been solved? Has progress been made? Do we still have a serious race problem in this country? According to a new poll, the answers to those questions are "no", "some", and "yes".

Consider the charts above, made using information in a new Economist / YouGov Poll -- done on January 8th and 9th of a random national sample of 1,500 adults, with a margin of error of 3.3 points (including 1,327 registered voters, with a margin of error of 2.9 points).

The top chart shows that a clear majority of Americans say race relations in this country are bad (65%), while only a minority think they are good (35%) -- a negative gap of 30 points. I would have to agree with that. While the civil rights laws of the 1960's corrected some of the worst problems, it didn't even come close to solving the serious race relations problems in this country. There are far too many racists clinging to their sick views (including our current resident of the White House), and there's still too much racism built into our institutions (judicial, law enforcement, educational, etc.).

The second chart is rather sad. It shows that only a plurality of 45% think race relations have gotten better since the 1960's, while 55% say they have remained the same or gotten worse. We have to do better. An American is an American regardless of skin color or national origin, and all deserve the same rights and opportunities.

Unfortunately, progress will be difficult to make with Trump in the White House. He has made it very clear that he is a racist and a white supremacist. And the public knows it. They believe his actions and words have made race relations worse (51%) instead of better (13%).

I wish I could end this on a positive note, saying we are improving race relations daily, but I don't believe we are. And as long as we have a racist in the White House, it's very doubtful that progress can be made. With the election of Trump, this country took a giant step backwards in race relations.

MLK Was Only One Of The Civil Rights Heroes

Yesterday was the holiday marking the life and accomplishments of Martin Luther King, Jr. I consider Dr. King to be an American hero, and to honor his holiday I posted several of his quotes on this blog. But today I wanted to say something else -- he did not accomplish his goals alone.

Too often today, we seem to give Dr, King all the credit for civil rights progress in the United States. But even he would have been quick to remind us that he was just one of many who made and won that fight. Dr. King was a great leader, but leaders must have help or they accomplish nothing.

We must never forget that many thousands of other Americans put their safety and freedom in jeopardy to fight the battle for equal rights in this country -- and many gave their lives in that struggle. A lot of these heroes did their work long before Dr. King was born, and more still continue the struggle (knowing that we are not yet where we need to be on equal rights in America).

It is right that we honor the leadership of Dr. King in the civil rights struggle, but we must not do it at the cost of forgetting the sacrifices of all those other heroes. Each one of them played an important part.

Freedom Must be Demanded

Elizabeth Warren - On MLK And Poverty In America

Yesterday, Senator Elizabeth Warren sent out this missive to her followers. I thought it was excellent, and I'm reposting it for those of you who might not be on her mailing list. It is well worth a read.

Each year, we honor the memory of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We honor his struggles and his triumphs. We honor his work to stand up to racial injustice and to help America move one step closer to her founding promise of equality.

But when Dr. King was taken from us, he was engaged in another struggle – a struggle that was no less challenging, a struggle that he believed was essential to America's soul.

It was the struggle to end poverty. And it is a struggle that is still with us today.

For years now, we have heard the claim that America is broke, that we cannot afford to invest in our children and that we must tell our seniors to try to get by on less. We face a world in which those born in wealth will have plenty of opportunity, but those born in poverty have little chance to escape – a world in which people work their hearts out and barely hang on.

That is not the promise of American life. That was not the America of Dr. King's dreams. And that must not be our American future.

In 1967, Dr. King told us what it would take to combat poverty. He said:

[W]e are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

We are now engaged in a great debate over poverty and inequality. And as Dr. King argued, "true compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar."

Our success as a community will be measured not by the riches of a few, but by the success of many.

There are some people who say that there is little that we can do, and perhaps less that we can do together, as a country. Dr. King had a response to them. He said, "[t]here is no deficit in human resources; the deficit is in human will."

In this, the richest and most powerful country in the world, we can expose the symptoms and causes of poverty, just as Dr. King's nonviolence "exposed the ugliness of racial injustice."

In this, the richest and most powerful country in the world, we can come together to build an economy that works for all our children, just as Dr. King's movement helped make "justice a reality for all God's children."

"In the final analysis," Dr. King said, "the rich must not ignore the poor because both rich and poor are tied in a single garment of destiny. All life is interrelated, and all men are interdependent."

The struggle may be fierce, the climb uphill, the obstacles tall. But in a democracy, we, the people, get to choose our destiny, and we can choose a country that lives up to America's founding promise and achieves Dr. King's dreams.

A Simple Concept

This is a simple concept, and I can't understand why it won't sink into the brains of right-wingers. If the masses of workers are doing well and earning a good living, that is good for everyone in society -- because it means they can buy the goods and services of the business community, and pay taxes to protect the country and help its poorest citizens. Everyone benefits. But when wages are cut and those workers can barely eke out a living, that only benefits no one, because those workers are also the customers -- and without a decent wage, they can no longer support the business community.

An Audacious Dream

That is audacity -- to think that every American should have equality, freedom, opportunity, and decent living conditions. But it sounds a bit like the audacious dream the founders of this country had. Maybe someday we will actually live up to that dream.

No Middle Ground

Martin Luther King, Jr. was an intelligent man. He knew that there is no middle road -- no way to stay out of the fight for good, for change, for progress. Those who do nothing are not staying out of the fight. They have instead, by their silence and inaction, joined the side of those who favor evil and obstruction to change and progress.

This country has not yet fulfilled its promise of equality under the law for all citizens. There are still many battles to be fought and won. Will you remain silent and join the forces of evil, or will you do your part to fulfill this nation's great promise? There is no middle ground.

Honoring A Great American

Today is the day our nation has chosen to honor Martin Luther King, Jr. with a holiday in his honor -- and it is appropriate that we do this. Dr. King didn't just fight against racism, but also against war and for economic justice. He fought to make this country better for citizens of all races and colors, and it cost him his life. The kind of courage this remarkable man displayed should be a beacon for the rest of us -- and he should be honored, respected, and never forgotten.

Today We Honor An American Hero

So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!


Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!


Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!


But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!


Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!


Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.


And when this happens, when we allow freedom to 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!"


Those are the final words of the speech given on the Washington Mall on August 28, 1963. It has been called the greatest speech of the 20th Century, and I see no reason to dispute that. The speech had, and still has, a profound effect on Americans of all colors and races. Today we honor the man who gave that speech -- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dr. King was not just a speech-maker, but a true American hero. He fought non-violently for a better America -- one in which all citizens could enjoy equal rights. And he put both his freedom and his life in jeopardy many times to fight for the equal rights of all Americans, regardless of class or color or race. In 1968, his life was needlessly taken by a racist gunman. But that could not stop the movement that Dr. King had helped to put in motion.

It is right that we should honor this great man. But we should also ask ourselves on this sacred day whether Dr. King's dream has come true in this country. If we are honest, we'll have to say that although progress has been made, we are still far from fulfilling that dream for equality and opportunity for all of the people in America. Much more remains to be done, and decent people across this country must re-double our efforts to see that it gets done. As Dr. King knew, no one is truly free or equal until all people are free and equal.

Take a little time today to remember this American hero -- and give thanks for his courage and leadership. He made the United States a better country.

MLK Statue Finally Dedicated

The statue honoring a true American hero, the legendary Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., was supposed to have been dedicated last August on the anniversary of his famous "I Have A Dream" speech (8/28/63). But Hurricane Irene prevented that. The statue was finally dedicated last weekend. Here is the speech President Obama gave in honor of the situation:

An earthquake and a hurricane may have delayed this day, but this is a day that would not be denied. 

For this day, we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s return to the National Mall. In this place, he will stand for all time, among monuments to those who fathered this nation and those who defended it; a black preacher with no official rank or title who somehow gave voice to our deepest dreams and our most lasting ideals, a man who stirred our conscience and thereby helped make our union more perfect. 

And Dr. King would be the first to remind us that this memorial is not for him alone. The movement of which he was a part depended on an entire generation of leaders. Many are here today, and for their service and their sacrifice, we owe them our everlasting gratitude. This is a monument to your collective achievement.  

Some giants of the civil rights movement -- like Rosa Parks and Dorothy Height, Benjamin Hooks, Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth -- they've been taken from us these past few years. This monument attests to their strength and their courage, and while we miss them dearly, we know they rest in a better place. 

And finally, there are the multitudes of men and women whose names never appear in the history books -- those who marched and those who sang, those who sat in and those who stood firm, those who organized and those who mobilized -- all those men and women who through countless acts of quiet heroism helped bring about changes few thought were even possible. "By the thousands," said Dr. King, "faceless, anonymous, relentless young people, black and white...have taken our whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in the formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence." To those men and women, to those foot soldiers for justice, know that this monument is yours, as well. 

Nearly half a century has passed since that historic March on Washington, a day when thousands upon thousands gathered for jobs and for freedom. That is what our schoolchildren remember best when they think of Dr. King -- his booming voice across this Mall, calling on America to make freedom a reality for all of God's children, prophesizing of a day when the jangling discord of our nation would be transformed into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. 

It is right that we honor that march, that we lift up Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech -- for without that shining moment, without Dr. King's glorious words, we might not have had the courage to come as far as we have. Because of that hopeful vision, because of Dr. King's moral imagination, barricades began to fall and bigotry began to fade. New doors of opportunity swung open for an entire generation. Yes, laws changed, but hearts and minds changed, as well. 

Look at the faces here around you, and you see an America that is more fair and more free and more just than the one Dr. King addressed that day. We are right to savor that slow but certain progress -- progress that's expressed itself in a million ways, large and small, across this nation every single day, as people of all colors and creeds live together, and work together, and fight alongside one another, and learn together, and build together, and love one another. 

So it is right for us to celebrate today Dr. King's dream and his vision of unity. And yet it is also important on this day to remind ourselves that such progress did not come easily; that Dr. King's faith was hard-won; that it sprung out of a harsh reality and some bitter disappointments. 

It is right for us to celebrate Dr. King's marvelous oratory, but it is worth remembering that progress did not come from words alone. Progress was hard. Progress was purchased through enduring the smack of billy clubs and the blast of fire hoses. It was bought with days in jail cells and nights of bomb threats. For every victory during the height of the civil rights movement, there were setbacks and there were defeats. 

We forget now, but during his life, Dr. King wasn't always considered a unifying figure. Even after rising to prominence, even after winning the Nobel Peace Prize, Dr. King was vilified by many, denounced as a rabble rouser and an agitator, a communist and a radical. He was even attacked by his own people, by those who felt he was going too fast or those who felt he was going too slow; by those who felt he shouldn't meddle in issues like the Vietnam War or the rights of union workers. We know from his own testimony the doubts and the pain this caused him, and that the controversy that would swirl around his actions would last until the fateful day he died. 

I raise all this because nearly 50 years after the March on Washington, our work, Dr. King's work, is not yet complete. We gather here at a moment of great challenge and great change. In the first decade of this new century, we have been tested by war and by tragedy; by an economic crisis and its aftermath that has left millions out of work, and poverty on the rise, and millions more just struggling to get by. Indeed, even before this crisis struck, we had endured a decade of rising inequality and stagnant wages. In too many troubled neighborhoods across the country, the conditions of our poorest citizens appear little changed from what existed 50 years ago -- neighborhoods with underfunded schools and broken-down slums, inadequate health care, constant violence, neighborhoods in which too many young people grow up with little hope and few prospects for the future. 

Our work is not done. And so on this day, in which we celebrate a man and a movement that did so much for this country, let us draw strength from those earlier struggles. First and foremost, let us remember that change has never been quick. Change has never been simple, or without controversy. Change depends on persistence. Change requires determination. It took a full decade before the moral guidance of Brown v. Board of Education was translated into the enforcement measures of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, but those 10 long years did not lead Dr. King to give up. He kept on pushing, he kept on speaking, he kept on marching until change finally came.  

And then when, even after the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act passed, African Americans still found themselves trapped in pockets of poverty across the country, Dr. King didn't say those laws were a failure; he didn't say this is too hard; he didn't say, let's settle for what we got and go home. Instead he said, let's take those victories and broaden our mission to achieve not just civil and political equality but also economic justice; let's fight for a living wage and better schools and jobs for all who are willing to work. In other words, when met with hardship, when confronting disappointment, Dr. King refused to accept what he called the "isness" of today. He kept pushing towards the "oughtness" of tomorrow. 

And so, as we think about all the work that we must do -- rebuilding an economy that can compete on a global stage, and fixing our schools so that every child -- not just some, but every child -- gets a world-class education, and making sure that our health care system is affordable and accessible to all, and that our economic system is one in which everybody gets a fair shake and everybody does their fair share, let us not be trapped by what is. We can't be discouraged by what is. We've got to keep pushing for what ought to be, the America we ought to leave to our children, mindful that the hardships we face are nothing compared to those Dr. King and his fellow marchers faced 50 years ago, and that if we maintain our faith, in ourselves and in the possibilities of this nation, there is no challenge we cannot surmount. 

And just as we draw strength from Dr. King's struggles, so must we draw inspiration from his constant insistence on the oneness of man; the belief in his words that "we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny." It was that insistence, rooted in his Christian faith, that led him to tell a group of angry young protesters, "I love you as I love my own children," even as one threw a rock that glanced off his neck. 

It was that insistence, that belief that God resides in each of us, from the high to the low, in the oppressor and the oppressed, that convinced him that people and systems could change. It fortified his belief in non-violence. It permitted him to place his faith in a government that had fallen short of its ideals. It led him to see his charge not only as freeing black America from the shackles of discrimination, but also freeing many Americans from their own prejudices, and freeing Americans of every color from the depredations of poverty. 

And so at this moment, when our politics appear so sharply polarized, and faith in our institutions so greatly diminished, we need more than ever to take heed of Dr. King's teachings. He calls on us to stand in the other person's shoes; to see through their eyes; to understand their pain. He tells us that we have a duty to fight against poverty, even if we are well off; to care about the child in the decrepit school even if our own children are doing fine; to show compassion toward the immigrant family, with the knowledge that most of us are only a few generations removed from similar hardships.  

To say that we are bound together as one people, and must constantly strive to see ourselves in one another, is not to argue for a false unity that papers over our differences and ratifies an unjust status quo. As was true 50 years ago, as has been true throughout human history, those with power and privilege will often decry any call for change as "divisive." They'll say any challenge to the existing arrangements are unwise and destabilizing. Dr. King understood that peace without justice was no peace at all; that aligning our reality with our ideals often requires the speaking of uncomfortable truths and the creative tension of non-violent protest. 

But he also understood that to bring about true and lasting change, there must be the possibility of reconciliation; that any social movement has to channel this tension through the spirit of love and mutuality. 

If he were alive today, I believe he would remind us that the unemployed worker can rightly challenge the excesses of Wall Street without demonizing all who work there; that the businessman can enter tough negotiations with his company's union without vilifying the right to collectively bargain. He would want us to know we can argue fiercely about the proper size and role of government without questioning each other's love for this country -- with the knowledge that in this democracy, government is no distant object but is rather an expression of our common commitments to one another. He would call on us to assume the best in each other rather than the worst, and challenge one another in ways that ultimately heal rather than wound. 

In the end, that's what I hope my daughters take away from this monument. I want them to come away from here with a faith in what they can accomplish when they are determined and working for a righteous cause. I want them to come away from here with a faith in other people and a faith in a benevolent God. This sculpture, massive and iconic as it is, will remind them of Dr. King's strength, but to see him only as larger than life would do a disservice to what he taught us about ourselves. He would want them to know that he had setbacks, because they will have setbacks. He would want them to know that he had doubts, because they will have doubts. He would want them to know that he was flawed, because all of us have flaws. 

It is precisely because Dr. King was a man of flesh and blood and not a figure of stone that he inspires us so. His life, his story, tells us that change can come if you don't give up. He would not give up, no matter how long it took, because in the smallest hamlets and the darkest slums, he had witnessed the highest reaches of the human spirit; because in those moments when the struggle seemed most hopeless, he had seen men and women and children conquer their fear; because he had seen hills and mountains made low and rough places made plain, and the crooked places made straight and God make a way out of no way. 

And that is why we honor this man -- because he had faith in us. And that is why he belongs on this Mall -- because he saw what we might become. That is why Dr. King was so quintessentially American -- because for all the hardships we've endured, for all our sometimes tragic history, ours is a story of optimism and achievement and constant striving that is unique upon this Earth. And that is why the rest of the world still looks to us to lead. This is a country where ordinary people find in their hearts the courage to do extraordinary things; the courage to stand up in the face of the fiercest resistance and despair and say this is wrong, and this is right; we will not settle for what the cynics tell us we have to accept and we will reach again and again, no matter the odds, for what we know is possible. 

That is the conviction we must carry now in our hearts. As tough as times may be, I know we will overcome. I know there are better days ahead. I know this because of the man towering over us. I know this because all he and his generation endured -- we are here today in a country that dedicated a monument to that legacy. 

And so with our eyes on the horizon and our faith squarely placed in one another, let us keep striving; let us keep struggling; let us keep climbing toward that promised land of a nation and a world that is more fair, and more just, and more equal for every single child of God. 

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.