The Dream
The Democratic Party thinks that you have found equality and equal access, as long as the Democratic Party is making the decisions, instead of the Republicans, whom they accuse of outright racism. Yet the Democratic Party practices a form of racism, too- a more subtle, insidious racism, but it is racism nonetheless. But I believe in true equality. I believe in equal access, and I understand that the economic system has always favored the white male. Reparations have never been given. Wealth has never been redistributed. Those with wealth would have you believe that is thievery to redistribute their wealth, but how easily they forget where that wealth came from. You will not hear many elected Democrats supporting reparations or wealth redistribution, because that would be a betrayal of their big money donors. The Green Party DOES support reparations and wealth redistribution, because we understand that if we continue to use the same system- a system which favors the wealthy- that nothing will change. The system will always favor the wealthy.
The Democrats praise Dr. King for speaking and fighting for equality, but they conveniently forget that Dr. King also spoke in favor of a redistribution of wealth and socialism. Not only to be treated as equals on a bus or in a diner, but to have equal access to the wealth of this nation. Dr. King also spoke against the senseless violence of war, something that the Democratic Party fully supports, because of the money that they receive from weapons manufacturers and the Wall Street firms which invest their clients’ money in those weapons manufacturers.
I, too, have a dream, and I think its the same dream that Dr. King had- a dream where we ALL have equality- black or white, Latino or Muslim, Native American or Filipino, Chinese or Indian, man or woman, heterosexual or LGBTQ, old or young. In that dream, we all can, not only be treated equally in business, but we all have equal opportunity to get a good education, equal access to health care, equal access to healthy food choices, equal access to a living wage.
Some say wage slavery is not slavery. It is true there is no legal ownership of a human being anymore, no actual whip in your master’s hand. But are you free to go to a supervisors meeting at 9:00 in the morning on a Tuesday if you want to? City council meetings are held in the evenings, because they know you are NOT free. If you stop working to go to a supervisors meeting, you’ll probably lose your job, at least if you’re honest about where you’re going. And if you do lose your job, another job will probably not be immediately forthcoming, will it? The fear of the time you must spend without a job, struggling, is what keeps you from going to that supervisors meeting.
Democrats and Republicans both think that equality is a word that means an equal opportunity to be a wage slave, an equal opportunity to be crushed under the boots of their corporate masters. We may not live in his house, but we are owned nonetheless. We may not get beaten with a whip, but we are getting whipped nonetheless. I believe, brothers and sisters, that true equality means the right to take a day off and go golfing with the wealthy, the right to organize a political resistance against what you KNOW is wrong. I believe, brothers and sisters, that the two party system is a farce, a scam, a joke. And they’ve been playing us all for fools, for decades.
The Democratic Party would have you believe that we’re all living in Dr. King’s dream, but I tell you, this is not Dr. King’s dream- where corporations own our government, funding both sides so the wealthy always win, where black people are filling our jails, and Latinos line our borders, being tear gassed as they wait for entry, where innocent Muslim men, women and children in other countries are killed, for oil profits, as they shelter from the bombs. It is not Dr. King’s dream that CEO’s should make 1000 times what their lowest paid employees make, while more and more people are crushed by debt and squeezed into homelessness, where the numbers of people on the islands in intersections, who are forced to ask passersby for money, are so great that it is easy to walk past these people in apathy, ignoring what is in front of your face. This is not Dr. King’s dream, this fascist state where the media colludes with the government to keep the truth from us and spews propaganda that keeps us divided- keeps us arguing with each other over religion, taxes, abortion, immigration. Dr. King wanted us to love each other- all of us. Dr. King said “We are either going up together, or we are going down together”, and if we can’t stop squabbling about our religions or about a tax rate that most of us will never be in in all their life, we are NOT going up together. This is not Dr. King’s dream. This is his worst nightmare.
-Jason Kishineff
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