I stand before you today with a simple few truths to bring to light. I was asked to be invited in to your hallowed halls, but I see that we are welcome on your sidewalk instead, in your streets. And I want assure you that we are not here…to occupy……nor are we here…to drink tea. We are here to bear witness to the wrongdoings of greedy men and women, and the misleading of failure to lead the very people whom they were elected by, to support, and speak for, and not to take more of their money to give yourselves pay raises. I am here to carry on that dream that sick people tried to extinguish in Memphis TN, on that balcony, in front of room 306, in 1968,and I am here to remind all of those who had water hoses and dogs turned on them while marching for equal treatment under the laws of this nation, that they did not sacrifice in vain, they weren’t beaten and jailed for nothing.
I also find it a fitting metaphor that we should stand in the street while you sit in your House, wishing these pesky field workers would go away. There is an all too familiar separation in that picture, of former slaves being divided, and pit against one another over privilege, or the darkness of their skin. Yes, I say to you, divide and conquer, is still the rule of the day. We stand here representing the unemployed, the disenfranchised, the man, the woman whose job has been shipped to India or China, to give the CEO’s that lobby you for their own gains, and pad your pockets a chance to grow richer while refusing to budge on a little help for the poor. I will not go into details right now; I have come to serve notice. A whole generation has awakened, nations of people worldwide are standing up and telling their leaders “we have had enough, this is not good enough anymore, we refuse to be beasts of burden to the machines.”
And I proclaim that it is time to wake up the children of this nation. Many of us will not make in a lifetime what many of you up there on that Hill will make every year, even after retiring, yet we pay that salary, while you give us table scraps. We are not dogs, we are human beings! We ARE HUMANS DOING!!! Most of my fellow countrymen vote for one side of your body or the other, in hopes of that promise for a better life, yet nothing ever changes, no matter the party, all we see is gridlock and childish argument, false piety and false tears for we, your people. As I stand here today, none of that has changed.
I stand here today, among brothers and sisters, dreamers and drummers to beat the drums of change. My message is as simple as that of Jesus to the money changers; “GET OUT OF MY FATHER’S HOUSE, YOU HYPOCRITES”! I mean by Father, our founding fathers and presidents over the past five decade that warned against this kind of America, one in which the power of the corporation far supersedes that of the Congress, or The White House. I am here to proclaim to ALL Americans, no matter what your social status, color, creed, or sexual inclination, that a grievous injustice has befallen us while we slept in the darkness of blind trust in this type of so called leadership. I have come to bring into the light the fact that we do not, as so many have been taught to believe, live in a true democratic society anymore. We struggle to pick up crumbs in a corporate oligarchy, where the prices of everything that affects our everyday lives, and feed the most basic of our human needs, a society not governed by those elected to do so, but by the corporations which have bought those who we mistakenly trusted as honest and sincere when they said “there will be a change.” There has not been, my brothers and sisters any such change, as we have all come to understand so well.
You say that we are the leader of the free world, while our children go hungry, families homeless, and all the while the financial institutions which fund our Government refuse to give us loans, even after being bailed out by our tax money and soon reaping untold billions of dollars in bonuses, NO this cannot represent the hope for a brighter future for ANY American. Deregulation of the lending institutions, manipulation by a select few… of the worlds actual wealth, wagering on the future success or failure to profit from our losses by the Wall Street Kings, has all contributed to where we are today for a people. No money goes to education. There are many more empty houses and buildings than there are homeless families, and bankrupted small business owners. This MUST change, in order to re-establish a solid middle class, one which allowed my father to raise a family on a shipyard salary on, one which my grandfather fought for in Germany in World War Two, no, THEY created my America, your America, what people once called with pride, the greatest nation on earth, but no more.
In conclusion, I propose a new America, a new revolution, but without guns and bombs. I can see a vision of a nation where it’s military, and National Guardsmen earn their pay, not in the killing fields, but in devastated neighborhoods. I see the combination of empty homes and homeless, of empty buildings and new small business, and I not only see, but call for an END to the monopoly, the subsidizing, the tax loopholes and the shipping overseas of American jobs. As the great Dr. Martin Luther King said the night before he was brutally slain while in Memphis, to help 1300 garbage workers get their rights; “all we say to America, is be true to what you said on paper. If I lived in China or even Russia or any totalitarian country, maybe I could understand some of these illegal injunctions, maybe I could understand the denial of certain First Amendment privileges because they haven’t committed themselves to that over there, but somewhere I read, of the Freedom of assembly, somewhere I read, of the Freedom of speech, somewhere I read of the Freedom of press, somewhere I read, that the greatness of America is the right to protest for rights!” And I say that in the last ten years, we have seen a stripping of those rights and a loss of basic freedoms, and a great and growing disparity between the haves and the have nots. This cannot lead America down a prosperous path for the future. We must unite, and petition these leaders, these plutocrats and corporate oligarchs who have sold our freedoms and this nation to the highest bidder. If necessary, we may have to pull them out of OUR House, and the White House, one by one like weeds from a garden, a beautiful garden that is we the people. Or surely, the deaths of every man, or woman, brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers who have given the ultimate sacrifice while believing they were supporting true freedom, whether on the battle fields or in the streets of this nation, will have been in vain. That is my message, now, who will stand with me? Who will walk down from your high office, your Congressional seat and stand against this plot against the future of America? We are waiting, we are waiting, you promised us change, and we are waiting still!
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