Dear friends, it is a great honor to stand here in your midst, to stand here speaking where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once stood and spoke. Here was a man--and we feel his presence in this place--who came into this world to speak the truth. Some people listened and understood, and some did not.
And the truth was this and remains this: that we are brothers and sisters; that our struggles to overcome injustice and unfairness, cruelty and oppression are only successful in the long run where our method is love --love of one another, love of our enemies.
When we hate our enemies, we stop praying for them. And when we stop praying for them, how can we ever hope to turn them around?
We all have known family members who were on the wrong path and who created turmoil and pain in our families. We pray for them, in love, to turn them around. Well, America is a family, too. And our struggles are family struggles, where love is the greatest power and, in the long run of history, the only real power. Look at the best things, the enduring things, that America has done for itself and for the world in the centuries of our history: they are changes motivated by love, by a dream of equality, by a dream of peace and justice. The changes wrought by hatred fall away, while the changes wrought by love endure.
The use of love and truth to bring forth justice non-violently was brought to this nation by Dr. King, and we thank him for it. He studied it and learned it from the writings of Mr. Gandhi. Mr. Gandhi learned it from the writings of John Ruskin and Leo Tolstoy, who learned it from the American Quaker abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison, who learned about it from the Sermon on the Mount. Thus, the great need for justice and freedom in America, the need to end slavery, resulted in a ripple of thought that spread and grew across the world, and came back to us in our time of need, thanks to Dr. King. He brought that teaching here, to this place, this room. Such is the enduring power of the Sermon on the Mount and of love itself in the world.
The teaching of non-violent political action is a five-fold technique that we must always remember. It must be taught in our schools. It must be remembered where ever people gather with the intention of improving their community or their world. Here are the five steps:
Number One: Determine the truth of a situation before taking a strong position. If it is an injustice, can it be clearly documented? Bring in the experts if you can. Be sure what you are advocating is actually and demonstrably the truth.
Number Two: Communicate your findings, your position and your request for change in a respectful and achievable way to the people who have the direct power to correct the situation. Don't ask someone for something they don't have the power to give. Don't shout on the sidewalks if you have not yet communicated respectfully with the parties in authority and have respectfully waited for a reply.
Number Three: If the response does not come, or is insufficient, bring public attention to the issue. Work openly so the thinking process of the entire community can be engaged. Gandhi and King were accused of staging events for the media. Of course they did. Social change is a public process, and it does not happen for the good when it happens in the dark. Engage the community openly so that they can be a part of the debate and the decision. Openness works easiest in a democracy, but it also works in authoritarian regimes, so long as there is visibility between the action and the public. Few governments, no matter how authoritarian, are immune from public sentiment.
Number Four: If those in authority will not correct a very serious situation that must be resolved, despite an open airing of the issue, then the advocates must be willing to make sacrifices to demonstrate the seriousness of the matter. When King marched forward toward batoned policemen in Selma, he showed that the issue was important. When Gandhi led marches and gave speeches that he knew would lead to his imprisonment that day, and when his followers stood in long lines to be clubbed by security forces standing in the way of their rightful path, the world stopped its daily routine to inquire: what injustice motivates the self-sacrifices of these people? What, in fairness, should be done? And here is the difficult key to success: It is in the endless willingness of the advocates to make a continuing sacrifice that guarantees their victory. No injustice is powerful enough, or has enough supporters, to stand against the flow of such generosity.
"You have been the veterans of creative suffering," Dr. King told his followers in the "I Have a Dream" speech. Well, creative suffering is something we all have the power to do. It happens to be the most powerful force for change in the world. It is always in our pocket, ready for the call of our conscience.
There is a fifth step, made necessary by the fact that the non-violence technique, when properly practiced, always wins. The fifth step, as developed by Mr. Gandhi and as practiced by Dr. King, is to be gracious in victory --to remember that your enemy is your brother, and that you should therefore settle the dispute kindly, accepting some compromises and granting as much face saving courtesy as possible to the other side. You will meet again, after all, and why not as friends? Gandhi said on many occasions that we have to love and respect our adversaries because they are our brothers and sisters and also that they are parts of ourselves and of our God. He meant it.
Here is a passage from his autobiography:
"Man and his deed are two distinct things. It is quite proper to resist and attack a system, but to resist and attack its author is tantamount to resisting and attacking oneself. For we are all tarred with the same brush, and are children of one and the same Creator, and as such the divine powers within us are infinite. To slight a single human being is to slight those divine powers, and thus to harm not only that being but with him the whole world."
Dr. King believed much the same, and you can hear it clearly in the "I Have a Dream" speech, where he calls us together as "all of God's children."
These are the five steps that gave India its freedom and which gave America its second revolution of independence at a moment when it could have devolved into a full race war. The moment King left this world, the violence that could have been ours all along showed itself in Watts and Detroit and a hundred other cities and towns. There is no courage in a thrown bottle of gasoline. Courage is what we saw in the buses arriving at Little Rock's Central High School and in the Selma march, not the riots of so many cities. Good changes, like the voting rights act and the opening of universities and public facilities, came from King's work. Poor changes, temporary changes, came from the anger of riots.
Love works. Love wins. Love endures. It is our religion, and it must also be our politics.
In my walk across the country, I speak against the idea that those individuals and those corporations with the greatest wealth should be able to buy our elections and our candidates and our representatives, diverting their attention from the needs of the people, and preventing honest candidates from winning.
That we have a problem, that money has become more important than ideas in our political debate, is a proven fact. That this huge, national influence-peddling scheme results in a mass diversion of the public wealth from where it is needed to where privileged people would have it for their own use, is no longer a debatable point. When I walk with this message, I have the advantage of speaking the simple truth, proven by every major research institution, on both the right and left of political life, who have taken the time to investigate the issue.
We have asked those in power to remedy the situation, and they have refused. We have asked them again, and again they have refused.
We have engaged the press of the nation to shine a great light on this cancer, and still there is no movement by the leaders.
And so we must reveal the depth of our concern. We must make a sacrifice of ourselves to demonstrate the serious nature of this problem, and this injustice. All great political change requires pain. Mr. Gandhi and Dr. King advised us to take that pain upon ourselves, not to inflict it upon others. And that is what we must do: to sacrifice, and to stand more and more forcefully in the way of this injustice.
There can be no true equality in America so long as only the rich are represented at the table of power. That is no democracy. There can be no true justice in America so long as only the privileged make the rules and build the jails for those outside the rooms of power. That is no democracy.
Only when we sit together at the table of power can we do the right things by our communities.
We need quality preschools, affordable or free, for all our young families. We will not get them if we are not ALL at the table of power.
We all need affordable health care. We will not get it if we are not ALL at the table of power.
We need quality public schools that will inspire and raise up our children to their highest potential, not suppress them and lead them to despair and trouble. We will not get such schools if we are not ALL at the table of power.
We need programs so that dropout rates evaporate to nothing and so that every child has a positive vision of his or her future in this nation.. We will not get those programs if we are not ALL at the table of power.
We need to make a college education as affordable as a high school education, because those who do not go on are doomed to poverty in the economy of the coming century. Moving from high school to college should be as automatic as moving from grade school to high school, and it is in the clear national interest of America to make it so. But it will not happen if we are not ALL at the table of power.
We need to make sure that the rising wealth of America is felt first, not last, in its poorest communities, with a new wealth of personal opportunities so that parents can provide for their children and have time left over to raise their children --and so that children can see a happy future. This will not happen if if we are not ALL at the table of power.
In this new era of electronic communication and commerce, we must include all our children and all our families. We are divided enough already, and we don't need a digital divide to further separate us. We need to provide connection to all our people. This will not happen if we are not ALL at the table of power.
We need employment and training programs to provide real access to all groups, all races, all people, to every rank of every career. We need to turn renters into home owners, and open up the capital markets that enable family businesses to start and grow.
We can insist on such changes, but only if we all sit together at the table of power. If we are separated we are not equal.
This is an agenda of love. These things will happen if we are all at the table of power.
For when we are in the same room, looking eye-to-eye, speaking heart-to-heart, it is hard for us to deny each other justice and equality as Americans. If I tell you what my children need, you will help me provide for them. If you tell me what your children need, I will help you provide for them. That is the essence of self-government in a free land. The trick is to get us all in the room, all at the table, and campaign finance reform is one of the keys to making that finally happen.
We do have the ability to publicly finance our elections, to make them as free as the candidates' speeches at a Forth of July picnic. And we must do it. We own the airwaves, after all. The billions of dollars we save by eliminating the corporate welfare that flows from today's corrupt campaign system could fund the public financing of elections, with nearly $50 billion left over each year. How we could better take care of our children with that!
We are a free and equal people --in theory and in law. But I don't believe we will have real equality, practical equality, and I don't believe we will have democracy, practical democracy, until the influence of private money is reduced in the elective process and people can run on the strength of their character, not on the size of their wallet; on the brilliance of their ideas, not on the network of their business connections; on their proven leadership ability, not on their slick powers of influence peddling and political extortion. To take money from those you regulate was bribery a thousand years ago, and it is bribery today. And while our leaders take campaign bribes with one hand --bribes that deprive us of our democracy-- with the other hand they falsely pledge allegiance to the great dream of America --the dream so many have died for.
"They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption; for whatever overcomes a man, to that he is enslaved." (Second Book of Peter, Chapter 2, verse 19).
And from Psalm 26:
"Gather not my soul with sinners, nor my
life with bloody men:
In whose hands is mischief, and their right hand is full of
bribes.
But as for me, I will walk in mine integrity: redeem me, and be
merciful unto me.
My foot standeth in an even place: in the congregations will I bless
the Lord."
I bless the Lord in this congregation and thank Him for bringing me safely to this place. I thank you for the honor of being able to address you here, under the Lord's roof and in the presence of Dr. King's spirit. I pray for those in this country who have the burden of responsibility for leading us. I pray that they shake off the chains of unrighteous obligation that tighten around them through the present campaign finance system. I pray that they will have the courage to do the right thing for themselves and for their fellow Americans. I know they are not happy with the present situation, nor are we, the people.
I tell you this: From this day forward, from this church forward, the campaign finance reform movement and the civil rights movement must join hands and sing a song of democracy together. Either the common people will rule this land, or they will be ruled. Either justice and loving mercy will be the condition of our communities, or the present harsh regime will continue to erode our lives and foment conflict and alienation within our communities.
We are walking together on the high road of history. We are on even ground, now, because so many sacrifices have been made behind us. We have nothing to lose that we care about, and our shared freedom to gain. We are walking in love, our successes sparkling behind us, and we cannot be stopped so long as our souls are alive, and our souls live forever.
Thank you. Join me in Memphis on September 7th, if you can --to keep walking where Dr. King fell, and on to Washington through the winter.