BEING SILENT ON THE THINGS THAT MATTER

From DailyKos - Read the whole piece, it's quite inspiring

Being Silent on the Things that Matter

This past weekend, I attended Tavis Smiley's "State of the Black Union" Conference in Atlanta, GA. As I sat in the santuary of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, a quote of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s replayed in my head like a refrain from a song. The quote is "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter." While it did my heart and spirit a world of good to hear heavyweights in the Civil Rights movement like Rev. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, or the Rev. Joseph Lowery, Michael Eric Dyson or Minister Louis Farrakhan, exhorting those of us in the audience and watching on C-Span, my mind kept repeating Dr. King's quote.

Can we continue to be silent on the matter of no longer having a free press, freedom of expression or the freedom to participate in political dissent, because dissent is essential to having true democracy?

Can we continue to be silent on the matter of a government whose sole mission is to continue to reward the wealthy at the expense of the poor? Can we continue to be silent on the matter of not having a guaranteed, fundamental, inalienable right to a quality education, affordable, liveable, sustainable housing, not to mention a sustainable and replenishing environment, quality healthcare and jobs that pay liveable, sustainable, family-supportable wages?

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The issues that concern Black America, are universal issues that are important to all Americans, Black, White, Brown, Red and Yellow, gay or straight, married or single, Christian, Jew, Catholic, Protestant, Episcopalian, Unitarian, Non-Believer, Agnostic or Atheist. We ALL want a sustainable environment, decent, affordable housing, quality public education for our children as well as those who missed out the first time; we ALL want jobs that pay livable wages above the poverty line, healthcare, and be able to return to the communities that nurtured us from infancy to adulthood. We ALL want to be treated with dignity, respect, honor and sensitivity to our individuality, our uniqueness, our ethnicity, our heritage. And the day we stop talking about these things that do matter to every human being on this earth, but more importantly in the United States of America, our lives don't begin to end: I submit that the day we begin to be silent on the things that matter to us as a Nation, as part of the human race, our lives have already ended, and we become walking zomies, unable to contribute anything that makes life worth living.


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http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/3/1/16957/65251