As últimas palavras do último discurso de Martin Luther King:
(...) Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
Bem, eu não sei o que acontecerá agora. Teremos alguns dias difíceis. Mas, para mim, isso não importa. Porque eu estive no cimo da montanha. E não me importo. Como todos, gostaria de ter uma vida longa. Por que não? Mas não estou preocupado com isso agora. Só quero fazer a vontade de Deus. E Ele permitiu que eu subisse a montanha. E eu vi lá de cima. E vi a terra prometida. Talvez não vos acompanhe até lá. Mas, quero que saibam esta noite que nós, como povo, chegaremos à terra prometida. E estou feliz esta noite. Nada me preocupa. Não temo nenhum homem. Os meus olhos viram a glória da chegada do Senhor.
Mais de 250 mil pessoas, oriundas de todas as partes do país, concentraram-se em Washington para exigir trabalho, liberdade, justiça social e o fim da segregação racial contra a população negra dos EUA.
Organizada, entre outros, pelo activista dos direitos humanos e pacifista Martin Luther King, a manifestação foi determinante para a aprovação das leis de direitos civis e direito de voto, em 1964 e 1965.
Foi nesta impressionante manifestação de massas que Luther King fez o discurso com a frase que ficou célebre em todo o mundo: «I Have a Dream!» (Eu tenho um sonho!).
Distinguido em 1964 com o Prémio Nobel da Paz, Martin Luther King foi assassinado em 4 de Abril de 1968, em Memphis, Tennessee.
Mais de meio século depois da Marcha, o racismo nos EUA está longe de ter sido erradicado.
Os vídeos são de facto brutais e dizem respeito apenas ao período 2013-2016...
As últimas palavras do último discurso de Martin Luther King:
(...) Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
Bem, eu não sei o que acontecerá agora. Teremos alguns dias difíceis. Mas, para mim, isso não importa. Porque eu estive no cimo da montanha. E não me importo. Como todos, gostaria de ter uma vida longa. Por que não? Mas não estou preocupado com isso agora. Só quero fazer a vontade de Deus. E Ele permitiu que eu subisse a montanha. E eu vi lá de cima. E vi a terra prometida. Talvez não vos acompanhe até lá. Mas, quero que saibam esta noite que nós, como povo, chegaremos à terra prometida. E estou feliz esta noite. Nada me preocupa. Não temo nenhum homem. Os meus olhos viram a glória da chegada do Senhor.
«(...) "If you respect my dollar, you must respect my person." It simply says that we will no longer spend our money where we can not get substantial jobs. [applause]»
- American sin, and Black Love
«I am a man with dignity and honor. (Go ahead) I have a rich and noble history, however painful and exploited that history has been. Yes, I was a slave through my foreparents (That’s right), and now I’m not ashamed of that. I'm ashamed of the people who were so sinful to make me a slave. (Yes sir) Yes [applause], yes, we must stand up and say, "I'm black (Yes sir), but I'm black and beautiful." (Yes) This [applause], this self-affirmation is the black man's need, made compelling (All right) by the white man's crimes against him. (Yes)»
- Negroes prevented from reaping fruits of their hard labor
«This man was a fool because he said "I" and "my" so much until he lost the capacity to say "we" and "our." (Yes) He failed to realize that he couldn’t do anything by himself. This man talked like he could build the barns by himself, like he could till the soil by himself. And he failed to realize that wealth is always a result of the commonwealth. (...)
And oh my friends, I don’t want you to forget it. No matter where you are today, somebody helped you to get there. (Yes) (...)
In a larger sense we’ve got to see this in our world today. Our white brothers must see this; they haven’t seen it up to now. The great problem facing our nation today in the area of race is that it is the black man who to a large extent produced the wealth of this nation. (All right) And the nation doesn’t have sense enough to share its wealth and its power with the very people who made it so. (All right) And I know what I’m talking about this morning. (Yes, sir) The black man made America wealthy. (Yes, sir)
(...) that’s why I tell you right now, I’m not going anywhere. They can talk, these groups, some people talking about a separate state, or go back to Africa. I love Africa, it’s our ancestral home. But I don’t know about you. My grandfather and my great-grandfather did too much to build this nation for me to be talking about getting away from it. [applause] Before the Pilgrim fathers landed at Plymouth in 1620, we were here. (Oh yeah) Before Jefferson etched across the pages of history the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence, we were here. (All right) Before the beautiful words of the "Star Spangled Banner" were written, we were here. (Yeah) For more than two centuries, our forebearers labored here without wages. They made cotton king. With their hands and with their backs and with their labor, they built the sturdy docks, the stout factories, the impressive mansions of the South. (My Lord)
Now this nation is telling us that we can’t build. Negroes are excluded almost absolutely from the building trades. It’s lily white. Why? Because these jobs pay six, seven, eight, nine and ten dollars an hour, and they don’t want Negroes to have it. [applause] And I feel that if something doesn’t happen soon, and something massive, the same indictment will come to America—"Thou fool!"»
InWhy Jesus Called A Man A FoolSermon delivered at Mount Pisgah Missionary Baptist Church, Chicago, Illinois, on 27 August 1967.
- American arrogance
«(...) because nations are caught up with the drum major instinct. "I must be first." "I must be supreme." "Our nation must rule the world." (Preach it) And I am sad to say that the nation in which we live is the supreme culprit. And I'm going to continue to say it to America, because I love this country too much to see the drift that it has taken.
God didn't call America to do what she's doing in the world now. (Preach it, preach it) God didn't call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war as the war in Vietnam. And we are criminals in that war. We’ve committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I'm going to continue to say it. And we won't stop it because of our pride and our arrogance as a nation.
But God has a way of even putting nations in their place. (Amen) The God that I worship has a way of saying, "Don't play with me." (Yes) He has a way of saying, as the God of the Old Testament used to say to the Hebrews, "Don’t play with me, Israel. Don't play with me, Babylon. (Yes) Be still and know that I'm God. And if you don't stop your reckless course, I'll rise up and break the backbone of your power." (Yes) And that can happen to America. (Yes) Every now and then I go back and read Gibbons' Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. And when I come and look at America, I say to myself, the parallels are frightening».
«I must say this morning that racial injustice is still the black man’s burden and the white man’s shame.
It is an unhappy truth that racism is a way of life for the vast majority of white Americans, spoken and unspoken, acknowledged and denied, subtle and sometimes not so subtle—the disease of racism permeates and poisons a whole body politic».
- Reparations
«(...) at the same time the nation failed to do anything for the black man, though an act of Congress was giving away millions of acres of land in the West and the Midwest. Which meant that it was willing to undergird its white peasants from Europe with an economic floor.
But not only did it give the land, it built land-grant colleges to teach them how to farm. Not only that, it provided county agents to further their expertise in farming; not only that, as the years unfolded it provided low interest rates so that they could mechanize their farms. And to this day thousands of these very persons are receiving millions of dollars in federal subsidies every years not to farm. And these are so often the very people who tell Negroes that they must lift themselves by their own bootstraps».
«Now, when we come to Washington in this campaign, we are coming to get our check».
Obama parece condenado a falhar segunda vez a promessa de encerrar a prisão depois de o Congresso ter fechado a torneira dos dólares.
Barack Obama parece condenado a falhar segunda vez a promessa de fechar Guantánamo depois de o Congresso ter recusado à Administração o dinheiro necessário para comprar a nova prisão, no Ilinóis, para onde deviam ser transferidos os terroristas mais perigosos.
O Presidente dos EUA admitiu há um mês que não será possível encerrar o centro de terroristas na ilha de Cuba a 22 de Janeiro, como ele próprio ordenara no segundo dia do seu mandato. (...)
«Recent events have vividly reminded us that nations are not reducing but rather increasing their arsenals of weapons of mass destruction. The best brains in the highly developed nations of the world are devoted to military technology.
(...)
So man's proneness to engage in war is still a fact. But wisdom born of experience should tell us that war is obsolete. There may have been a time when war served as a negative good by preventing the spread and growth of an evil force, but the destructive power of modern weapons eliminated even the possibility that war may serve as a negative good. If we assume that life is worth living and that man has a right to survive, then we must find an alternative to war. In a day when vehicles hurtle through outer space and guided ballistic missiles carve highways of death through the stratosphere, no nation can claim victory in war. A so-called limited war will leave little more than a calamitous legacy of human suffering, political turmoil, and spiritual disillusionment. A world war - God forbid! - will leave only smoldering ashes as a mute testimony of a human race whose folly led inexorably to ultimate death. So if modern man continues to flirt unhesitatingly with war, he will transform his earthly habitat into an inferno such as even the mind of Dante could not imagine.
Therefore, I venture to suggest to all of you and all who hear and may eventually read these words, that the philosophy and strategy of nonviolence become immediately a subject for study and for serious experimentation in every field of human conflict, by no means excluding the relations between nations. It is, after all, nation-states which make war, which have produced the weapons which threaten the survival of mankind, and which are both genocidal and suicidal in character.
Here also we have ancient habits to deal with, vast structures of power, indescribably complicated problems to solve. But unless we abdicate our humanity altogether and succumb to fear and impotence in the presence of the weapons we have ourselves created, it is as imperative and urgent to put an end to war and violence between nations as it is to put an end to racial injustice.
(...)
We will not build a peaceful world by following a negative path. It is not enough to say "We must not wage war." It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it. We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war, but on the positive affirmation of peace. There is a fascinating little story that is preserved for us in Greek literature about Ulysses and the Sirens. The Sirens had the ability to sing so sweetly that sailors could not resist steering toward their island. Many ships were lured upon the rocks, and men forgot home, duty, and honor as they flung themselves into the sea to be embraced by arms that drew them down to death. Ulysses, determined not to be lured by the Sirens, first decided to tie himself tightly to the mast of his boat, and his crew stuffed their ears with wax. But finally he and his crew learned a better way to save themselves: they took on board the beautiful singer Orpheus whose melodies were sweeter than the music of the Sirens. When Orpheus sang, who bothered to listen to the Sirens?
So we must fix our vision not merely on the negative expulsion of war, but upon the positive affirmation of peace. We must see that peace represents a sweeter music, a cosmic melody that is far superior to the discords of war.»
«We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth that we will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations – acting individually or in concert – will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.
I make this statement mindful of what Martin Luther King said in this same ceremony years ago – "Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones." As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King's life's work, I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence. I know there is nothing weak –nothing passive – nothing naïve – in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King.
But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism – it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.
(...)
But we do not have to think that human nature is perfect for us to still believe that the human condition can be perfected. We do not have to live in an idealized world to still reach for those ideals that will make it a better place. The non-violence practiced by men like Gandhi and King may not have been practical or possible in every circumstance, but the love that they preached – their faith in human progress – must always be the North Star that guides us on our journey.»
A invasão do Panamá num filme de Barbara Trent, escrito por David Kasper e narrado de Elizabeth Montgomery. Sim, essa mesmo, do Casei com uma feiticeira, o que exemplifica mais uma vez que há muitíssimos cidadãos dos EUA que não estão comprometidos com as políticas do respectivo governo. Será que ainda seremos acusados, num texto intitulado O Soviete da Califórnia, de ressuscitar Elizabeth Montgomery para falar do horror das Américas do Sul e Central? Será que o texto terminará com a sentença definitiva «A cultura norte-americana estado-unidense infiltra-se onde menos se espera» como se «eles» tivessem o monopólio de gostar do povo norte-americano. Sim, gostamos do povo americano. Todo o povo americano, do sul ao norte (basta consultar este blogue: Robeson, Luther King, Neruda, Evo Morales, Cuba, Rafael Correa, In The Ghetto, etc., etc., etc.).
Esta pode ser uma amostra, datada de há vinte anos, de uma futura guerra nas Américas que os EUA se preparam para fazer com o golpe de Estado nas Honduras e a instalação de bases militares na Colômbia (e não só). A ver com atenção porque está (quase) tudo aqui.