全英文马丁路德金演讲后感

NOT JUST A DREAM

Martin Luther King is best known for being an iconic figure in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the worl d, using nonviolent methods following the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi.

We all know about Dr King’s civil rights work, and his I HAVE A DREAM speech. But did we all know that he had two other dreams? WHERE DO WE COME FROM HERE? that explains Dr King’s vision for the end of poverty has been out of print 40 years. He not only focused on Civil Rights, but illustrated a sort of socialist vision for an integrated society. We coul d have end ed poverty a d ecad e ago, except we choose to attach Iraq and bl ow up a trillion d ollars d oing it instead of ending poverty. Dr. King provid ed a snapshot of where Americans were in 1967. Two turning points had been reached. First, his program of nonviol ent direct action was cl early winning the struggl e against ol d fashioned southern segregation, and Dr. King was l ooking toward the next step. He believed that the next logical step toward setting peopl e free was a massive government program ad dressing the problem of poverty. Second, within the civil rights movement, a "black power" mentality was gaining prominence. Some argued that whites should be exclud ed from the civil rights movement, and that nonviol ence should be aband oned. Dr. King insisted that this approach woul d only balkanize our country, having disastrous effect, especially on blacks.

He brings us to the question of what African-Americans should d o with their new, d early fought for freed oms found in laws such as the Voting Rights Act of 1965. All Americans black and white must unite in ord er to fight poverty and create a new equality of opportunity. King is neither a Marxist nor a d octrinaire socialist; he instead advocates for a united social movement that would act within both the Republican and Democratic parties.

He rightly conclud ed the riots of 1966 and thereafter was "uprisings" against the awful reality that African American equality must a go along with ad equate wages, quality schools, and d ecent houses. All initial aims of the Johnson

administration. African Americans were impossibl e without meaningful creation of jobs, quality education, and a radical change of the forms and vigorous confrontation with and the elimination over time of American racism. King asserts that capitalism itself woul d have be hugely revamped so it is more inclusive, and, lastly, American militarism is not only brutal to American youth, but has slaughtered millions of human beings in Asia, and now elsewhere, whil e reroutes billions of d ollars from essential programs that coul d battle U.S. poverty. Poverty is an American way of life, including not only African Americans, but other minorities, workers, and southerners.

American must realized that there was something terribly wrong with her economic system which permits millions of poor to exist in a land brimming with wealth.Although Dr. King as one of the greatest orators in American history. is no l onger with us, his message has been preserved.