Dr. King's NIGHTMARE

 [00:00:00] Most of us, we're all familiar with Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 's I Have a Dream speech. I have a dream that one day my children will be judged by the content of the character and not the color of their skin, right? I have a dream today, yay, March on Washington, yes! March that Martin Luther King Jr.

also had A nightmare. Was his nightmare, black youths sagging their pants? No. Is it, uh, black women wearing hair bonnets at the airport? No. Is it the astonishing number of war criminals who also won a Nobel Peace Prize? Also no.

Is it the backwards walk American society has done back to the racist ideas of the [00:01:00] 1960s that he died, gave his life, fighting against? Yeah, probably that. I've got some explaining to do. Let's get into it. Welcome back. Welcome back to Ayanna Explains It All. The podcast hosted by me, Ayanna Fakir, the black Muslim lady lawyer who has an opinion on everything. Ayanna Explains It All is a podcast that bridges the gap between current events and human behavior.

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And um, I also use a lot of news and I use a lot of journals, journal articles, and I use books and I always cite to all of my sources in the episode description. So if you're looking for something, you can find it right there. And I, I hope that I'm mentioning these source names also when I talk, but I always forget to do things.

So if you're looking for the source, if, when I cite to something, I will always say, this is from this book or this person said this. And I put that also in the episode description so you can find it there, And I posted a little welcome back video on my social medias, but I had to explain that I got sick.

At the end of 2023, I had bronchitis, could barely breathe, couldn't talk, and so I could not do my, um, end of the year retrospective and I just got so out of the mood of [00:04:00] doing it. I might do something with it later, but, um, at the end of season two, I was just like, Oh my God. Okay. I, I, I'm just going to jump right into season three.

 And since it's MLK Day on Monday, I am recording this on Saturday, January 13th, 2024. Happy New Year. MLK Day is on Monday, the 15th of 2024 in January. And people are going to be posting quotes about MLK and photos and all of their retrospectives and their analysis all over social media.

And they're going to be probably parades and pageants and, and church services and services at the, the, the Lincoln Memorial and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Services at the MLK statue in Washington, DC mural. Rather in Washington, DC, and a lot of people are going to be talking about the positives. A lot of people are going to be talking about the [00:05:00] hopeful, uplifting messages.

People look at the, I have a dream part, but they don't look at the nightmare. part of that, the opposite of that, what King feared, what he would have been afraid of. He didn't live long enough to see his dream realized actually.

And that's the nightmarish part of it is that he didn't live long enough to see it realized, but he also, if he had lived until 2024, he would have been in like his nineties or something. He would have seen. His nightmare realized or maybe he wouldn't maybe he would have continued to work and things would have he would have actually Achieved an end to racism in the United States.

That was his dream That was his dream to achieve an end to racism in the United States His dream was not that his children are judged by the content of their character No, it was that the barriers to them being seen As people with character, as people, as humans, as [00:06:00] people deserving of being here would be removed and those barriers were based on the fact that people were black and these people were white and these people were Asian.

These racial barriers is what he wanted removed. These racial injustices is what he wanted to remove. So it wasn't that he was like, look at my kids and don't see color and be colorblind. No. He didn't believe in race neutrality. He believed in peace and ending injustice, ending suffering in the world and suffering in our particular part of the world at that time was caused a lot by racial injustice.

And you have to see color to get rid of racial injustice. You have to acknowledge that there's racial injustice. is. And how do you do that? If you're race neutral, if you don't see color, if you're coming up with these race neutral policies, but you have to first acknowledge that there is racism, that there is color consciousness.

You have to recognize first that there is a problem with how [00:07:00] we perceive each other because of the color of our skin. And that is what he wanted to end. He wanted to end the barriers. That prevent us all from achieving greatness, from having all the things that we desire, from achieving our dreams because of the color of our skin.

Look at me as a human being. Treat me like a human being, not because you don't see my color, but because you have removed the obstacles, you have removed the barriers to me being seen as a human being because I am black. Right. So, but people love talking about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., but they hate talking about race.

They hate talking about racism. You cannot talk about MLK without talking about race and racism. You simply cannot. You would be doing yourself a disservice, not him. You would be doing yourself a disservice because you would be lacking in understanding about one of the most important figures [00:08:00] in American history.

One of the most important figures in civil rights history, human history. I mean, he's a very, he was, he was, and still is a very important figure for black Americans. And I'm not, I'm, I'm just not sure how you suspend talking about race and racism when you talk about MLK. It was his mission to eradicate racism.

And you all need to acknowledge that. It was his mission to eradicate racism, to eradicate racial injustice. You cannot do that if you don't acknowledge that these things exist. Yes, they do still exist. They absolutely still exist because they went from being overt racism in your face, racism to now more sophisticated racism, it has been become sophisticated because now it's policy. Now it's built into the policies that governments are using. When dealing with the public, [00:09:00] the way clean water is distributed to people is often based on race and economic class.

Yes, there's racism in how we deliver water to our people. There's racism in water. How do you turn water racist? It's the policy. It's how governments treat the people. It's not that the rule, this is black water, but no, it's how governments set up systems of number one, cleaning water, delivering water, billing for water, keeping the water clean, keeping the water safe.

A lot of it is based on racism. That's why Jackson, Mississippi has dirty water now. Because the state of Mississippi, based on their disdain for this black town and its poor [00:10:00] people, based on their disdain for it, they decided that they were just going to let the water system go. And now they're being sued by the U.

1. government. And now they've had their water system taken over by the U. S. government in Jackson, Mississippi because of the racism involved in how the water is cleaned and delivered to the people. Same thing happened in Flint. The same thing is happening in Baltimore. If you look throughout the U S the same thing is happening in these, um, farming towns where there are a lot of migrant workers and a lot of, um, Hispanics living the water delivery.

It's, it's dirty and people don't care because, Oh, well, it's just going to these poor Brown people. Whoop dee doo. They can just drink some bottled water.

So you cannot talk about MLK without talking about race. You cannot say that racism doesn't exist because it is now more sophisticated and it's so sophisticated that so many things would have to be undone. The U. S. government would have to sue every state to undo what's [00:11:00] happening.

Racism in health care. In healthcare and how people are treated when they go to receive care. There was a doctor, I don't know if you guys can find this on tick tock. He might have deactivated his account by now. He should the doctor on tick tock who does these videos, these informational videos. And he starts off by saying, well, I know I'm going to get canceled for that.

So, um, he says that if somebody out there, any one of his followers can explain to him why when he's, he's an ER doctor when he's treating. Someone who was black in the emergency room when he's treating someone who was black, why they stay on their phone while he's treating them. He said, it's only the blacks that do this.

And I don't understand why they do it. I'm just trying to understand. And I know people are going to think I'm icky and I'm probably going to get canceled for this, but I just want to understand why they do it. And so instead of this inviting the education he needed, what he really needed to do was educate himself.

[00:12:00] So you don't expect, you don't ask. You don't ask the people who you're talking about to educate you. You educate yourself, especially if you're a doctor, the fuck is wrong with you. Are you incapable of researching something? Are you incapable of reading a book to try to understand the culture of the people you're treating?

I guess so. But what this did was invite a lot of racist, really racist responses from his followers. It was, it's so disgusting how people responded immediately negatively. to this negative post instead of saying to him, dude, you know what, this ain't it. But then there were people who stitched the video on TikTok who were reading him to filth, including black doctors.

And I appreciated it so much because this MF er is ignorant, ignorant. A lot of ignorance comes out in these. Can you guys just tell me why people do this? People who are black and people who are Muslim and people who are Jewish, why [00:13:00] they do them and then in it. You're ignorant and you're inviting more people to say ignorant things.

Why are you doing this? Because you think it's cute. Because you think it's innocent. There's nothing innocent about this. Please. There's nothing innocent about it. But um, racism has become sophisticated. This is what we're dealing with. And in the United States, last year alone, in 2023, we saw the progression of racist ideas in education.

We saw the End of affirmative action. We see voter suppression policies. We see policies that are making poor people poorer. We see in the last, I would say in the last 40, 30 to 40 years, we've seen the war on drugs that has led to the mass incarceration of mostly black and Latino Americans. And, [00:14:00] and the fact that this has happened and people continue to say that racism does not exist and that America is not a racist country is astonishing to me.

And maybe you don't see it because you're not affected by it. The majority of people who live in this country are not affected by racism, but then the so called minority. The people who are affected, who are telling you this over and over and over and over and over and over and over our experiences and outlining these things, these events that happened to us and telling you this is happening and showing you all the ways it's happening and you're just sticking your fingers in your ears and closing your eyes and waving your flag around and you've got, you know, you're singing the Star Spangled Banner and you're pretending like everything is okay.

Like we've overcome everything. Like, okay, we shall overcome. But we haven't, we haven't. I've been reading a book called Stamped [00:15:00] from the Beginning. It's one of the most widely banned books in schools across America. There is. A school edition of this book, but it's been banned because it is showing the history of racist ideas in the United States. It covers some of Europe too, but it's showing the history of racist ideas in the United States and it's by, uh, Ibram X.

Kendi and he talks a lot about where these ideas come from. right? How they originated. He talks a lot about colonization, and he talks about these famous American leaders who were also participants in the development and spreading of racist ideas and their actions and how they led to the perpetuation of segregation, the continuation of slavery, even in After it had ended, even after the slave trade had ended, as well as Jim Crow, as well as the development of these [00:16:00] sophisticated racist policies in American institutions.

He talks a lot about that, but he also talks about how Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 's teachings are not really being absorbed. properly and how people got him effed up, right? He said in an interview with public radio in 2022, he said.

We have been taught and we're especially taught around King's birthday as well as Black History Month that America's racial history is this sort of singular force, this sort of march forward, and at times we're taking steps back. But typically, we're taking steps forward. What I find in my research is actually two historical forces that not only have we in many ways overcome chattel slavery, overcome forms of Jim Crow, but racist policies themselves have become more sophisticated over time.

 take [00:17:00] voter suppression policies. While a century ago, the way they were suppressing votes was poll taxes and literacy tests. Now, the ways they're suppressing votes are in some states, voter ID laws, or not allowing people to pass out water on extremely long lines or closing down polling stations, which then increases the number of people.

And so the tactics that are being used are more sophisticated. And now the justification is more sophisticated because it's voter fraud, electoral security, Which of course is much more enticing to people because any American thinks it's great or important for our elections to be fair. But in reality, it's just propaganda to substantiate voter suppression, right?

And so you see how the ideas, the racist ideas have become more sophisticated and this happened In Ohio too, there's been severe gerrymandering by the [00:18:00] GOP in Ohio. I talked about this in a past episode on voting in Ohio when they were voting on issue one to keep, um, how constitutional amendments are adopted in Ohio to keep that process the same so that when the vote came up for reproductive rights in Ohio.

people could just vote on the amendment and have it be adopted. And that is what happened. But the GOP wanted to change how amendments are adopted to the constitution because it wasn't going to favor them. But they've also been gerrymandering. And so a lot of the districts have been redrawn. Into areas that favor their political party, and they're managing to get more congressional representatives based on that.

And there are areas that are losing congressional representatives, but they're doing this to poor and racial minorities. And they're also trying to change the rules. On voting, registering to vote. They've [00:19:00] kicked people off of voting rolls. They have a dozen or so times changed what I. D. is appropriate for voting.

It used to be that you could show, um, a utility bill or any kind of official document. You could use a passport. I mean, you could use just about anything as an ID, you know, in, in where I live anyway. That is no longer the case. Now, there's only one thing that is an ID officially. If you want to do business in, in banks, if you want to do business before a government body, you know, you want to go to court, anything, you have to have a state issued ID.

It's rare that you can use a passport, but you can't even use a student ID. You have to have either a driver's license or a state ID. Now, If you're homeless, you're houseless, [00:20:00] you, what, who, what, we're, but you also want to vote. You don't lose the right to vote because you're homeless. You still want to vote.

What are you going to do? Maybe you don't have an ID. What are you going to do? I don't know if they supplement this for people who are unemployed or who don't or who are homeless. I don't know how they do that. But if you want to vote, you have to have an ID. What are you going to do? They give you a provisional ballot.

And if you don't show proof of, of identity within 30 days or something like that, then your vote is tossed out. But if you go into a polling station and say, here's my passport, I want to vote. They're going to be like, no, get the fuck out. So they changed the rules for, um, IDs. But then they also changed the polling station hours.

We used to have weeks ahead to do early voting. Now it's just like a couple of weeks before each election that you can do early voting. And then it's only a certain number of [00:21:00] our hours. And then you have to go to the actual board of elections to do this. You can't go to like these. They used to have a bunch of other places for early voting in Ohio back when Obama head run for president.

And they were like, Oh, look, all of these people voting early and they're all black and they're Democrat. We don't like that. So we're going to change the hours and then we're going to change the locations. And then we're going to change the, the, the time they get to register to vote.

And then we're going to change the requirements for showing ID when they want to vote. And they said it was because of voter fraud, that there was rampant voter fraud, which is a lie. It's a lie. They lie. They lied to get what they what they wanted. They lied to get what rather they lied to get the public's support for what they wanted.

That is what they did. And they continue to do that and they've drawn these district maps that three, four times the Ohio Supreme Court has said, this is unconstitutional. [00:22:00] It violates the civil rights of the people of Ohio. Go back and draw it. And they've done this several times. And the GOP continues to come back with these district maps that are unfair, that are unjust, that favor their party, by the way.

This is the only reason they're doing it. And the Ohio Supreme Court keeps saying, nah, it's not. But at some point, it gets to be too late. It gets to be too late to redraw the map before the primary or the general election, and they just have to go with what they have because they're the party in power.

The party in power gets to draw the map. Well, actually, they both get to draw the map. The Dems get to contribute and the Republicans get to contribute, but because the Republicans are in power, they have the final say. They have the final say. And the Supreme Court has been like, nah, man, this is unconstitutional.

When someone, when a court tells you it's unconstitutional, that should be it. You should respect that and go back [00:23:00] and redraw it and make it constitutional. But see, you like to think that you can get away with things because you have so much power. And because you have the support of the people of the state that you live in, you think you can do whatever you want.

And not only that, you think people are not paying attention. You think people aren't really going to be thinking about this until the election, but there are more people thinking about these things and paying attention to these things than ever before. And we're not going to let you get away with this shit.

We're not. And we are not, we have not been letting, letting you get away with this. And so voter. Suppression is just another way that these racist ideas and policies have become more sophisticated and that would have been, that is MLK's nightmare. All of the fighting that the civil rights leaders and, and participants in all of the marches and the movements and registering people to vote [00:24:00] and dying.

For people to have the right to vote and, you know, having the hoses and things turned on them and being beaten by police, all of the work that they did, all the marches that they did, the endless work that they did only to have in 2024 these voters suppression policies. That's scary. That's scary. That's scary.

That's scary. We have gone back and we have moved backwards. We have gone backwards.

So you'll find no shortage, and I mean no shortage of Caucasian politicians using MLK's quotes about truth and justice and liberty to press their own agendas. In American government policy, Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, to name two [00:25:00] very stark examples in recent history who have completely distorted Martin Luther King Jr's Uh, the words

to demonize, yes, demonize black people, to demonize racial minorities. For instance, Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas says that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would be appalled. By the Black Lives Matter. Movement and that it's more of a sin problem than a skin problem because as his issue was and is and is the, uh, the ire of people like him, white politicians, white Republicans, white people or people who are against black lives matter protest or protest against racial injustice.

Their issue is that people are protesting racial injustice. People are [00:26:00] rioting. for racial justice. People are rioting when a black person is killed unlawfully. We're tired. We're angry. We're upset. And we're supposed to somehow act in a dignified manner when responding to this.

And Sure. MLK would have been peaceful, nonviolent. That was his movement, but he understood rioting. He understood protests that turned violent. He understood why people would be angry and upset and call for tempering our anger and ups and upset feelings, but he would also understand. He would also say that this is a reflection of a people who have been hurt for so long who are crying out for justice and it should finally be addressed and you all should stop ignoring it.

He would not have been, in my opinion, he would not have been, um, disgusted by it. He would have been probably happy to [00:27:00] see that black people are still fighting for for our freedoms. That part of it is what people should focus on. The fact that black people still have to fight for these freedoms in the United States in the year 2015 or in the year 2020 or in the year 2024.

The fact that we still have to do this is what would upset. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. That is the piece right there. The fact that black people are being unlawfully killed by police every day is what would have been disgusting to Martin Luther King Jr. is what he would have found detestable. That is his nightmare right there.

That police violence is still killing black people. This happened a lot in his time, police violence, mob violence, racial injustice, killing black people, and it is still happening, but it's happening in those basic ways, but in more [00:28:00] sophisticated ways to when black people are not receiving proper health care.

and dying from illnesses they should not be dying from that they could take a pill or have a surgery and be fine when they're dying because their pain complaints are not being believed. That is what he would have found disgusting. The fact that people are protesting and rioting. It's something that sometimes isn't necessary to bring eyes to the, to the, to our movements, to bring eyes to our causes, to say, look, people are hurting, they're upset.

They want to know what's being done. They want to know why this happened. There's nothing wrong with that. But there are those who would suggest that people protesting. Is a problem that we should just stay in our little corner and write letters to our senators and representatives and express our derision and why we're unhappy and put on a suit and tie and, and shiny shoes and [00:29:00] deliver our letter to Washington.

That that is somehow better than simply taking this shit to the streets.

 Instead of focusing on what we're protesting

as Brother Ibram said in his talk with public radio in 2022, he said that there are people who claim that MLK would have been appalled by the Black Lives Matter movement because they believe that protest even if done peacefully is wrong because you're protesting the police. You're saying All lives don't matter because people are trespassing instead of focusing on what we're protesting.

The protest becomes the focus and demands summarily dismissed. And that is what happened in, in, in a lot of these cases where people were protesting, the focus became on property destruction and trespassing. And people were being killed, [00:30:00] honestly, by police and by, uh, idiots who came to help the police with their guns.

Kyle Rittenhouse. That became the focus. Well, these, these black people are being violent. How could you say that you want peace for your people, that you want justice for your people, and you're being violent and you're tearing up people's businesses and that, uh, Instead of focusing on why these people are upset, we want police reform, we want law enforcement reform.

Hey, some people want the police to disappear altogether. Some people don't want prisons. They want prisons dismantled. They want law enforcement agencies disbanded. They don't want this military style type of police patrolling their neighborhoods. They don't want that. They don't want that in their community.

They don't want their children to have to grow up fearing police and they want it to go away. Instead of. Uh, examining this and changing law enforcement policies. In most cases, nothing was done. [00:31:00] In other cases, they just revamped the police department. They added more weapons. They added more military style weapons.

And, and of course there are payouts and lawsuits from people who have been brutalized by police and to families of people who were killed by police. But changes? Changes? No, no. It looks the same. The landscape looks the same. I mean, we saw this last year in the cases of people who were murdered by police and we saw the videos and we heard the stories.

The landscape has not changed. Unfortunately, Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would be dismayed and horrified. Horrified that he is being used as a prop, a prop for people who want to bring esteem to themselves and their social medias and make themselves [00:32:00] look as if they are important or humane.

People use him as a prop to display their humanity when really it's just empty headedness because you're not actually Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was anti racist, okay? He was anti racist. He was actively anti racist. So unless you are actively anti racist, then you need to not utter the name of Dr.

Martin Luther King Jr. because you do not embody what he was about. You do not embody what he was about. He was anti war, anti bombings, anti racism, anti injustice. He was anti poverty. He was anti struggle. He hated it. All of it. He wanted peace. He wanted equality. He wanted justice. He wanted fairness. He didn't want any of this shit that we're seeing now [00:33:00] that people are saying are no necessary evils.

 And he would have been dismayed at the fact that the people who are doing this to blacks are also using him and his quotes and his work. On his day, on his holiday, to pretend as if they are some kind of person of the people, that they are humane, that they are color blind, that they, uh, they get it, they understand and they, they love their brothers, their black brothers and sisters and their, you know, hands across America and shit.

He's being used as a prop. And if you saw, um. What's his name? Jonathan Majors was recently in the news a lot, and especially because he, he, what he did, who cares? That's over and done with. But what he said in one of the recordings that were [00:34:00] played in court was that he wanted his ex girlfriend to Be, uh, his Coretta, his Coretta, Scott King.

And then he said the same thing on TV when describing his, uh, current girlfriend, Megan actress, Megan. Good. He said he, she's his Coretta. And then Bernice King, the Reverend Bernice King got on social media. She's very good at, at hitting back. I love it. She's so tactful. And she said, my mother was not a prop.

And she'll tell you the same thing about her father. Her father was not a prop, but her mother was not a prop. She was a great woman in her own right before she, before she even met her dad, she was a great woman in her own right, but she was not a prop. And this is what we do with these figures. We hold them up as some kind of perfect example of what life and humanity should be, and we [00:35:00] should.

Follow them and be just like them or pretend to be like them. Because if we pretend to be like them, if we pretend to embody their words, then people will think we are also great and important and we've evolved and we understand and we're people of understanding and we're, we're someone you can rely on.

We are ally. No, unless you are being actively anti racist, you are not an ally. Are they racial minority? You are not. And unless you're being actively anti racist, you do not embody nor do you understand the teachings of Martin Luther King Jr. You don't. And there are black people who just as well as white people do not understand or embody the teachings of Martin Luther King Jr.

Yeah, we fall prey to it too. We fall prey to the post the quotes on his birthday, talk about him during Black History Month, and we don't understand a fucking thing he said. [00:36:00] All we know is I have a dream, I have a dream. His most famous quotes are often taken out of context and not followed through with to their goal ending strikes.

His goal was to end racism. Have we seen an end to racism? We have not. And people who tell you that we have are mistaken. They are very mistaken. If you've experienced racism in 2023, then we have not ended racism. If you experienced it in the first month of 2024, we sure as hell have not ended racism. And there are a lot of people who last year share on their social media, racist encounters that they have had with other people, in this country from being profiled at restaurants, from being profiled by the police, from being straight up told, Hey, you're black.

We don't like you. Get out, get out of our restaurant. Get out of our neighborhood. What are you doing here? There was the black fishermen who [00:37:00] got on a tick tock and he did a series of videos on how he's racially profiled by people living in his own neighborhood because he's fishing, he's a black man fishing in a pond, which he was allowed to do.

And there would be white people who would report him or who would come over to him and question why he was there.

 There has not been an end to racism, subtle racism, overt racism. There has not been an end to it. The black maternal death rate in the United States is the highest, the highest. It is an epidemic. There has not been an end to racism in the United States.

There is a disparate treatment of black people in the health, in the U. S. healthcare system. There's disparate treatment. Black people are treated worse. We are ignored. Our complaints are ignored. We are not met with compassion and empathy like our [00:38:00] white counterparts. We are not taken seriously, especially black women who are pregnant and giving birth.

A black doctor, very famous black doctor, got on social media and said that she dismisses the complaints of her black patients because she thinks they're crying wolf. Her black pregnant patients. because she thinks they're crying wolf. We're not making this up. This is real. This is very real. So people who post these quotes, these quotes that are often taken out of context and not followed through with their goal ending strikes.

And one of the books that I had a chance to read last year is called freedom is a constant. struggle. And it is by Angela Davis, freedom fighter from the 1960s and 70s. And she was on the FBI most wanted list and she was in prison. And when she got out, she just became a face of a movement of [00:39:00] black, not black feminism, but also social justice, also equality for all people.

She discusses different civil rights leaders. And she also talks about how these movements for racial justice and equality are intertwined with other movements in other parts of the world.

As well as in the United States with other groups of people like trans and gay people and

and she talks a lot about Martin Luther King Jr. And she said, um, when she discusses his view on interconnected struggles, as she points out in his letter from a Birmingham jail in which he defended his decision to organize in Birmingham, where he was accused of being an outside agitator in this way. He said, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states.

I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in [00:40:00] Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, right? That, that's one of his most often quoted, especially on MLK Day. You are going to see this a lot. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. She's, she goes on to say, you are probably familiar with that quote. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. And then he proceeds to evoke history.

For more than two centuries, he wrote, our four bearers labored in this country without wages. They made cotton king. They built the homes of their masters while suffering gross injustice and shameful humiliation. And yet out of a bottomless vitality, They continue to thrive and [00:41:00] develop.

If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. And then she goes on to say, we know that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is one of the most widely known historical figures in the world. Inside the U S there are more than 900 streets named after Dr.

King in 40 states, Washington D. C. and Puerto Rico. But it has been suggested by geographers who have studied these naming practices that they've been used to deflect attention from persisting social problems, the lack of education, housing, jobs, and the use of carceral strategies to conceal the continued presence of these problems.

There are more than 900 streets named after Dr. King. But there are also some 2. 5 million people in the United States jails, prisons, youth facilities, military prisons, and jails in Indian [00:42:00] country. The population of those facilities constitute 25 percent of the world's incarcerated population as compared to 5 percent of the planet's population at large.

25 percent of the world's incarcerated population serves as. fodder for a vast prison industrial complex with global dimensions that profits from strategies designed to hide social problems that have remained unaddressed since the era of slavery. And I myself, I would dare to say, to add to her words.

That most people who are familiar with Dr. King and the vast majority of people in the world are familiar with him. And then she goes on to say, I would dare say that most people who are familiar with Dr. Martin Luther King and the vast majority of people in the world are familiar with him. [00:43:00] They know little more than the fact that he had a dream.

And of course. All of us have had dreams, she says, and as a matter of fact, the I have a dream speech is the most widely circulated of all his orations. Relatively few people are aware of the Riverside Church speech on Vietnam and the way he came to recognize the intersections and interconnections of the black liberation movement and the campaign to end the war in Vietnam.

Indeed. Indeed, people, as I say, he was a figure for peace, Dr. King was a figure for peace. He was a face of the nonviolent protest movements, but he did not believe in no movement. He did not believe in not fighting. He would have been delighted. To see the racial justice protests of 2020 and 2016 and [00:44:00] 2017 and 2015 he would have been delighted to see the black lives matter protest but dismayed at the now quiet retreat of many people since then and the reliance on charlatans with greedy intentions who collect money in the name of dead black children in the name of avenging the.

Death of black children and use it for their self gratifying interests. I'm talking about Sean King. And can I say just for just as an aside, the crying that people who are involved, uh, in the free Palestine movement are doing about Sean King is just silly. It's silly. It's silly. There have been, and still are, thousands of people involved in this movement for a free Palestine who are a million times worth their salt than Sean King.

He's a, he's a charlatan. He's [00:45:00] a grifter. Masquerading as someone who is important and influential and needed in these movements. He is not needed. You do not need these people. You can use your own voice.

You can use your own voice, your own social media. You are privy to the same stories and the same news that he is. You can share it. You can make videos like he does. You can raise money like he does. You can do that. You don't need these grifters. And if you're looking for information on why I consider him to be a grifter, Google it.

It's out there. Somebody came into my DMs on Instagram and asked me for sources because I had said in one of the posts that people were crying about Sean King about, you know, Oh brother, Sean King has been banned from Instagram. Oh no. And I said, good. You don't need him. He's a grifter. And there are thousands of sources out there who back this, who say this, who have studied this, who have gone over the, the finances [00:46:00] and the facts and the timelines.

He's a scam artist and I'm not the first person to say so. This is my opinion. And of course, everything is allegedly, allegedly. But if you're crying about Sean King and you need Sean King and we need Sean King and he needs to get his Instagram back, stop it. And if you're looking for sources, Google, Google Sean King grifter and they will all come pouring forth at you.

Okay? But Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would be dismayed to see. The lack of black Americans in prominent leadership roles in the United States and the insistence that when you see them, it is only because of affirmative action, not because these people are intellectually, emotionally, and educationally superior.

Not because these people are the best person for the job, but because of affirmative action, because of diversity, uh, [00:47:00] equity and inclusion initiatives. That's why these people are here because they, they are, um, a token because this, this corporation or this organization needed black numbers or Latino numbers.

That's why this person is here because still in 2024 still. Black people, racial minorities are viewed as inferior to white people. The only way we can get somewhere and do something is by affirmative action. They keep telling us. And so now that affirmative action in education has been ruled unconstitutional, they're now telling us, Hey, so why don't you just try to get in on your own merit unless you can't.

They already view us as inferior. The same way wealthy people view poor people as inferior. None of us is inferior to each other. And I've said this so many times, but it bears repeating. [00:48:00] We are only superior to each other when it comes to the performance of our deeds. Our race doesn't make us superior to each other.

Our finances, our neighborhoods, the words that we use, the accolades that we have, none of this material stuff makes us superior over each other. None of it. We're only superior to each other by our deeds.

Think not of yourself as inferior. You are superior to people based on your deeds, race, gender, none of that matters when it comes to who is superior, who is favored, who is good on this earth. The good people are doing good things. Good people are doing good things. So when people say that black people can't make it because we're inferior, because we can't get in on our own merit.

We have to have a hand up as, uh, Dr. Keene has said [00:49:00] that nothing wrong with telling someone to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, but telling someone to pull themselves up by their bootstraps when they don't have any boots, that is wrong. So you give them some boots, nothing wrong with that.

Harvard University had as its president for six whole months in 2023, a black woman named Dr. Claudine Gay, a black woman in a prominent leadership role. In a position to affect change at one of the oldest universities in the country, one of the most respected in the world, Harvard University. A university with a black population percentage of about 6.

2 percent and the Hispanic population of about 9 percent with a minority faculty population of less than 15 percent and [00:50:00] underrepresented population of women. Dr. Claudine Gay was picked to and accepted the job to lead that university. into the 20, you know, 2024, 2025. She could have been president for 30 years, 40 years, 50 years.

Until she did the one thing that as a black person in power, you're never supposed to do. You are not supposed to anger the whites. They giving, they've given you a black ass a chance. They givin givin you Darkie a chance. Now you better do good. You better be on your P's and Q's. You better say everything right.

Do everything right. You better kiss their asses. You better make them feel good. Feel good about having you there. Feel good about themselves. We only exist to stroke their egos apparently because the moment she went. Just [00:51:00] slightly errant of what these people would have wanted. They sought to destroy her.

They started pulling things out of her past saying that she had plagiarized her dissertation and uh, when she went before Congress to testify on free speech on campus and antisemitism, she gave an answer that they didn't like. She answered honestly, in my opinion, but she gave an answer that they didn't like.

She was called antisemitic. Which is the default for anybody who's, who says anything that is for a quality for everyone. Apparently, apparently she, and, and she paid for it. Even though the, the board, the board at Harvard said that they were backing her and they had full confidence in her. Um, she resigned over Christmas.

She resigned. She was a black woman who [00:52:00] was hired to lead a mostly male, mostly white faculty and student body. And when she did not fall in line as they expected her to do, she was forced to resign. In my opinion, she was forced, even though they said that they had, you know, full confidence in her. People were being so damning of Dr.

Gay. They were being so damning that there was no way. No way. And then Harvard is being sued because for allegedly allowing an increase in anti semitism. And for these reasons, she was forced to resign. But she was also made president of Harvard at a time when affirmative action was being dismantled. So not only was she picked to lead a university that's mostly white and mostly male, she was going to somehow have to explain.

Why her minority populations were now going to decrease. It was going to become whiter [00:53:00] and more masculine. It was going to become whiter and more masculine than it already is. And I'm not saying that affirmative action is the reason that black people get into Harvard. Certainly it is because of our merit, but they are not leaving any doors open anymore.

Now you have to, and we already know this. I've talked about this many times, how black people, even if we are the same as white people, our opportunities are not distributed the same. So opportunities for higher education. are not as prevalent for black children as they are for white children. And if you're poor, it's even worse.

The opportunities are not distributed equally.

You're already starting behind your white counterparts not because you are black, but because the system treats you different and distributes [00:54:00] opportunity to the two groups unequally.

And by systems, I mean, education, financial systems.

And so, Dr. Gay was going to be presiding over a university that was going to become more male and more white. And well, there was just no way that was going to happen, was it? They weren't going to allow that to happen.

They weren't going to allow a black woman to lead a mostly white and mostly male university. No, not if she wasn't, you know, going to fall in line. Not if she was going to be saying these things that white males, and it was exactly white males who went after her, as they attempted to destroy her reputation, her career maligned her name.

It was them who started it and they went after her and they got all of their bots and their, you know, Republicans. I hate affirmative action [00:55:00] motherfuckers on their side. And they did, they did a whole press number on this woman. But Dr. Gay's resignation represents just one of the factors that sees black women not accepting, not completing, not going for leadership positions in majority white communities, organizations, corporations, and schools at a time when black women are the face of political and social movements such as the presidential race.

Thanks. races, congressional races, uh, at the forefront of organizations that are fighting for racial justice in the courts and in health care. Black women are being questioned about the efficacy of our leadership and whether we earned our place in these spaces we inhabit where there are not a lot of blacks faces.

There are not a lot of black faces. What are you doing here? How did you get here? Are you token? You're a token black. Somebody needed to fill a quota. It naturally becomes that we are treated as if we don't belong there. We're [00:56:00] all automatically seen. As someone who should not be there or someone who was given a hand up.

And let me tell you something. The fact that black people were enslaved, enslaved for 300 years. If the government wants to give black people who are the descendants of slaves a hand up, who the fuck cares? We are owed. We are owed. Pick a book on slavery, any book, even a book written by someone who was pro slavery, you will find the most disgusting, awful, ugly, racist.

Inhumane stories of treatment and how slavery was viewed and how slavery developed and how racist ideas develop. You will be sick to your stomach. These people were psychotic. Slave owners, slave masters, slave proprietors, these people were psychotic and [00:57:00] disgusting in the fact that black people were used as breeding animals, treated as animals, treated as chattel.

If the government wants to give us a hand up. If the government wants to give the descendants of slaves a hand up fucking Bravo, we deserve it. We deserve it. And I don't care what anyone has to say about it. We deserve it. But there are a lot of us who are highly intelligent people, highly intelligent, very hardworking, very decent people who are in the spaces we're in because we're good at what we do because we're intelligent, because we're smart, because we're hardworking.

But that our merit is being questioned by people who are not in the same positions or who are upset that we are in those positions. Indeed, the fight for equality is not over. This, this would have been, this is Dr. [00:58:00] Martin Luther King Jr. 's nightmare. The fight for equality is not over. Not in the 40 years, the 40 plus years since his assassination is the fight for equality over.

It's not over because the fight for equality, for freedom right now, for racial freedom and equality, the fight against inequities requires at this point, dismantling of the entire system of justice, education, politics, healthcare, law enforcement. that form our societies and rebuilding them as equal institutions, equal in all respects.

 Americans.

We are allowing ourselves to be pit against people who struggle maybe similar to ours because they are immigrants, because they are migrants, because they are poor. And of course, [00:59:00] many of us are seeing our struggles in the faces of the Palestinians, the Sudanese, the Congolese, but we are at home demonizing impoverished migrants who are on our soil seeking a better life for themselves.

Why are they here? What are they doing here? These poor people. Taking up space? In our cities? Get them away from me. Get these poor people away from me. But then we'll, you know, yell at each other about supporting Palestine. Well, what have you done for the Sudanese and the Congolese? What have you done for the people who are living right here in the United States who are begging for jobs, water and food?

What have you done except demonize them? But you want to be concerned with people looking, uh, in, in other regions to help people in other regions. All of these struggles are interconnected, all of them, all of them, we're all [01:00:00] fighting. All of these struggles. People who are fighting these wars, people who are fighting against these injustices are fighting against all of them because, as Dr.

King said, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, injustice anywhere. It's a threat to justice everywhere. That's what he meant. He recognized the interconnectedness of these struggles and how you have to keep your eyes on all of these things, how you have to keep fighting.

This is why the fights are not over. This is why the struggles continue because they are everywhere. They're happening everywhere. And unless we do something about what's happening on our shores and abroad, what's happening abroad is going to come here and what's happening here is going to go abroad. We experienced colonialism and we're dealing with the effects of it.

We experienced slavery and we're dealing with the effects of it. We experienced recessions. We [01:01:00] experienced, um, economic booms, economic booms, do we experienced war? We have all been dealing with this. We understand we can sympathize. We empathize. We should be able to at this point, but a lot of us are still arguing about who is worthy of help and protection.

And some of you are sitting back and not doing anything. And a lot of this is fueled by politicians and the wealthy. Who really have no stake in any of this except that it benefits them to have the non powerful non wealthy fighting and distracted from their evils and groveling to them for assistance.

Like every negative line from Elon Musk. His tweets, they start a fiery discourse, putting people against each other and taking sides and and what are nuanced discussions? Wealthy people and politicians who sometimes one in the same. They do their worst [01:02:00] to convince voters and consumers that we're being oppressed.

So we'll spend our money with them or support them in the elections or support candidates that wealthy people are backing.

Another phenomenon that Dr. King would have found frightening is the amount of war we're experiencing in our current world. And the events recently in Palestine with the genocide in Palestine probably would have been most upsetting to him. Not because he did not love Israel. I mean, he was an evangelical preacher.

Of course he loved Israel and Bethlehem and birthplace of Jesus. He would have been dismayed that there is no justice. And without justice, you can't have peace. There's, there has been no justice in that region since in the years since he passed away. And in the time, you know, [01:03:00] when he was living, this was ongoing.

There was the six days war in Israel where he was particularly upset because in the summer of 67, he was planning a monumental trip to, uh, to Israel. He was going to preach at the Mount of Olives and pray with thousands of congregants in Jerusalem and Galilee. As some said, this would have been his Moses moment leading black people to the promised land.

And this quote is from a Mother Jones article from Uh, November of 2023, it says, .But just before his planned arrival, Israel launched the sixth day war against Egypt, Syria, and Jordan gaining territory, but killing thousands. Israel would lay claim to the entirety [01:04:00] of Jerusalem and seize control of the Gaza Strip, West Bank, and the Sinai Peninsula.

In the Sinai peninsula, eventually returning Sinai to Egypt after a peace treaty was signed in 1979, as Martin Kramer reveals in his book, the war on error, this series of unfortunately timed events would lead King to come under pressure to take a public stance on the six day war.

Which he did on June 18th, 1967 on ABC's Sunday's issues and answers, King said it would probably be necessary for Israel to give up the territory it had conquered to allay the bitterness of the Arabs. And here's the full quote. I think for the ultimate peace and security of the situation, it will probably be necessary for Israel.

To give up this conquer territory because to hold on to it, what will only exacerbate the tensions and deepen the bitterness of the [01:05:00] Arabs. And he also canceled his trip. He did not go. But people who look at these bombings and looking and look at this war and think, wow, he would be happy to see Israel fighting back against these dirty, miserable Arabs.

No, that's simply is not true. He would be upset. He was anti war. He was pro peace. He was a pro peace human being. You think a pro peace human being would be happy to see any war? Towards the end of his life, he was protesting the Vietnam War. Another war that some Americans viewed as necessary because of communism.

 But thousands and thousands and thousands of people were dying and this place was being bombed and there were people being bombed in their homes and he was at the end of his life pushing for workers rights and unionizing. He would be proud to see unions flourishing, but an unhappy to [01:06:00] see stagnant wages and people not being paid a living wage that has forced them to work multiple jobs to feed their families You know, living in their car and working instead of living in a house and working, he would be unhappy to see these things.

He would be unhappy to see war. He would be unhappy to see it. And as Reverend Bernice King said on, uh, on X on Twitter, she actually just posted it on all of her social medias. She said while her father was ardently against anti Semitism. She says, I am certain he would call for Israel's bombing of Palestinians to cease for hostages to be released and for us to work for true peace, which includes justice.

And indeed that's what he would have wanted. His nightmare would have been to see babies being bombed out of their beds. Babies, you know, with their heads smashed [01:07:00] in, people being buried under rubble, people bleeding in the street, bodies left strewn in the, in the street and you know, the number of journalists who are dead and the number of doctors who are deceased and religious. Um, buildings being bombed. One of the oldest churches in the world was destroyed by Israel because they allege that there were terrorists hiding in the church. You think he would have been delighted? By that that would have been his nightmare. That is his nightmare that we are moving backwards. We are going back In fact, we're getting worse. We're bombing even more You think he would be happy to see our policy in the Middle East? You think he would be happy to see that the first black president of the United States dropped more bombs?

In the Middle East than any other president. You think he would be happy to see that? He'd be outraged. He'd be [01:08:00] disgusted. He'd be disgusted.

But here we are sitting back comfortable, waiting for that auspicious day where we could post our pictures and our quotes and say that we embody what Martin Luther King was about and we're living his dream because we're present here. We're just happy to be present. So that's obviously proof that his dream has been realized.

Bullshit! Bullshit. Don't kid yourselves. Do not kid yourselves. He'd be very dismayed and unhappy that despite everything he did in his lifetime and how he died, he was assassinated for fighting for racial justice and for justice for poor people and fighting against the unjust war in Vietnam that we have given up the fight, many of us.

And one reason for this, in my opinion, is that we think, you know. We're [01:09:00] waiting for a hero to come along. Na, na, na, na, na, na, I'm alone. Sorry. We're, we're, we're, many of us are waiting for that person. Or we've turned to other people to do the job for us. Again, Sean King. We've, uh, or we've decided, hey, we're done.

It's, it's equal now. I have a white neighbor and he's not burning a cross on my lawn. So we're all good. It's fine. We've given up. We've let it go. We've, we've moved on, even though racism still sitting right there, racism still sitting there with his legs folded like, Oh, really? Oh, let me show you why that's false, but we don't need a face, a figure, a hero to tell us how to proceed in these fights.

So many of us follow these dumb chuckle heads who manipulate everything from currency to technology who are sexual deviance and tax cheats. We follow these people for [01:10:00] guidance. We want them to tell us how to proceed, what to care about, what to put our money on. We act like such idiots and babies in their presence.

We think that they have all the answers, that they know what's best, and we rely on them to lead us. Why? We don't see ourselves as a movement. We don't see ourselves as leaders. I posted this question on my Facebook and I asked people to name some of today's black leaders. And leaders in the Islamic community.

I got one person who gave some very good answers. One person. Everybody else was like, Mmm, I don't know, girl.

 I love y'all, but those answers scared the shit out of me. I'm like, Why is this the state? Why is this the state of our community? You know, the [01:11:00] grassroots movement, people on the street, people just out there in the community is what got Obama elected, both times. Both times, and it is what got reproductive rights codified in the Ohio constitution.

Yes, people, just regular people every day out there being a movement, taking these fights into their hands and saying, I'm going to do something about this, and getting out there, knocking on doors, making phone calls, talking to people, convincing people, getting signatures for, um, To get names and things on the ballot, these, getting people to register to vote and driving people to the polls.

There were people who were giving, you know, when, when we were voting for Obama, there are people who were renting vans and driving people who couldn't make it to the polls to the polls. Grassroots movements got these important things completed. Two things I'd never thought [01:12:00] I'd see in my lifetime, but I'm certainly glad that I have.

These are things that I've hoped for. Those things happen because of grassroots roots movement, because of people deciding that these things were important enough to fight for, that they were gonna help, that they were gonna do something. They were not gonna sit around and wait for somebody to tell them to move.

They were not going to follow someone and be told who to vote for. They were going to figure it out for themselves and see that this is the best candidate, or figure out what issues are most important for them and push for them.

Grassroots movements, just little people, everyday people, people with no power, people with no wealth just out there trying to make the world a better place for themselves and for their families and for their neighbors and children. My goodness, we do not need heroes. We already have the blueprint. We have the blueprint.

We have the blueprint. We have the blueprint. Why do you need someone to tell [01:13:00] you what to do? Why do you need someone to tell you to keep fighting? Why do you need someone to tell you to not give up? You know, there's a, um, a surah in the Holy Quran and one of the passages is, and it's very, it's quoted quite often, and it is after hardship comes ease.

And then the next passage after that is after hardship comes ease it's Surah 94 and two of the ayats in this Surah are the most cited in my opinion that I see so many people posting and posting and posting because it's a great reminder.

 After hardship comes ease, and that's passage five and six.

After hardship comes ease, and we have to remember that things are gonna be hard, but God has promised us that it's going to be easy, but then people just kind of cut it off and they don't [01:14:00] look at the seventh iat. The seventh iot says, so when thou art relieved, still toil. So when thou art relieved, still toil, still toil, still work, still fight, still work, still keep at it, persisting.

Don't give up. Don't stop working because guess what? These hard times are going to come again. And then what are you going to do? Because you haven't been working this whole time, you're, you're not going to remember how to work. You're going to think, Oh, it's hard again. What do I do now? What do I do now?

When if you had just, if you had kept working, maybe the hardship wouldn't be as difficult for you. Or maybe you would have laid a groundwork to help you get out of the hardship faster. Easier, whatever the case, God says, when [01:15:00] you are relieved, still toil. We're sitting around waiting for somebody to, to tell us what work to do. We need to, we know the work that needs to be done. We know that we are all we need to do the work. We are the movements. We don't have to wait for someone to tell us how to feel.

We see each other struggling, languishing, being obliterated, dying, being bombed, you know, begging for food on the, on the corner, being ushered from this place to the next because we're unwanted, because we're poor or migrant or black or, you know, uneducated because we're asking for some kind of benefit.

We see ourselves being, um, humiliated and laughed at. We see the wealthy, the rich taking advantage of us. And we're waiting for someone, someone to tell us what to do about it. You know what to do. You know exactly what to do. You have been given the blueprint. If you would, I don't know, maybe pick up a book, [01:16:00] maybe read something, maybe study something.

Maybe, you know, talk to people, but you know what to do. It's just, it's hard work and people don't want to do hard work. People want to do what's easiest, what's most convenient, what's going to get them the results faster, what's going to make them feel good and fast and quick. People love to give advice, but advice without tools is just you trying to save somebody.

Just to satisfy your ego. You're not really helping. You're just, you know, you've got that savior complex where you think you're important that you should help people. That's your job, but you're not actively anti racist. You're not a true ally. You're just pretending to be because your ego depends on you helping people, but you're not really helping.

There are people who are like this.

We don't need these people and you don't need to [01:17:00] become one of those people. But each one of us, we are a movement. The movements, there are millions of people in this country and the movements are rich with us, with human beings, with each one of us. Each one of us can contribute in a large or small way, but we do not realize our power.

We're afraid of our power sometimes. We're afraid of being judged. We're afraid of not being taken seriously. We're afraid that when we get into these positions, such as president of Harvard, that we're not going to be taken seriously, that we're going to be viewed as a token, that if we don't act or think or speak in a certain way, that people are going to think we are unworthy of our positions and then discount our demands and discount what we have to say.

We think we have to act a certain way. We have to pass. Powerless. Unknowing. Unaware. Someone told us. Someone on social media told us that the fights are over. [01:18:00] You know, everything's equalized now and you're looking around and you're thinking, but that's just not true. If we pay attention, we see the struggle is ongoing, so the fight can't possibly be over.

If people are still struggling, we still need to fight, right? Yes. There are people all over the world. In the United States, doing tremendous things like reporting on genocide, risking their lives and their family's lives, or they're protesting for reproductive rights, and they're risking their jobs and their freedom, or they're shouting down Zionists at political rallies or confronting politicians who have their hands in the cookie jar.

There are people doing great things because they do not. And these people don't necessarily have the notoriety or the. following of, you know, certain figureheads and certain famous people that we see on social media, the people that we're always looking for, you know, to praise Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

became one of those people, but the movement was bigger than him, but [01:19:00] he also humbled himself to the movement as did Nelson Mandela, as did. Malcolm X, they did not want to be the movement. They humbled themselves to it. They understood it. They understood that they played a role, that they were a part of it and not the important part because before them there were others.

Before there was Rosa Parks, there were dozens of black women who refused to give up their seat to a white person and move to the back of the bus. Before and during the civil rights era, before MLK and during MLK's run, uh, and during MLK's tenure, during his leadership tenure, there were countless thousands of.

Faces of men, women, and children, working class people, you know, people without jobs, people who just wanted a better life, who were on the front lines of these civil rights battles. Yes. Children, their children in Palestine fighting against the genocide, fighting against the ethnic cleansing. [01:20:00] There are children who are screaming out because they want to be free.

Who remembers Fannie Lou Hamer as well as they remember MLK? Who remembers Shirley Chisholm as well as they remember Hillary Clinton or Geraldine Ferraro? The first to do something is often not the face of the movement, unfortunately. Not that they deserve it any less, but there are people who were present in fighting for Palestine for Palestinian freedom in the U.

1. long before Sean King decided to get involved in the fight and become some kind of figurehead and become, Oh, look at me, look at what I'm doing. Look at the important thing that I'm doing. Long before, you know, black lives matter came along. There were people who were fighting for racial justice for black people, people who were just doing it with the little space they had on desk in their home.

They were organizing marches and before there was Obama and Bush and Clinton and Carter, there were people in this country concerned [01:21:00] about apartheid faced by Palestinians, people who were black and American and seemingly unaffected. They knew that our struggles were intertwined as, as Angela Davis talks about in her book,

the same way that the nations came together to gather the Nazis and Milosevic and the Rwandan leaders at international courts of justice is the same way. The way that South Africa, that nation, that singular nation in, in the continent of Africa has decided to, to file papers in the international court of justice in the Hague against Israel, accusing it of genocide.

They presented a beautiful case the other day. One country, one country did that. One country decided to do that. They didn't wait for anybody to tell them to do it. They didn't wait for somebody to say it was okay. They got tired of hearing the United Nations shout down security resolutions, shout down cease fires.

They got tired. They said, no, we're taking [01:22:00] this to another court, and we're going to do this, and we don't care who signs on to it. We don't care what Israel says. We don't care what the international community says. We're not going to take this anymore. And no, it's not happening to them, but apartheid happened to them.

And there were people all over the world working against apartheid in South Africa, fighting against apartheid in South Africa for decades. There were countries where people were fighting against apartheid in South Africa while their country was also supporting the apartheid in South Africa. I'm talking about the United States of America.

Yeah. So the movement is you. You don't need to sit and wait for someone to tell you how to proceed because the person you're waiting to tell you how to proceed is probably someone who is not going to be on the same side that you were on. And wouldn't that make you feel uncomfortable if you were following them?

[01:23:00] The future of shaping the world we want, a world of equality and fairness and justice as King contemplated started, starts with us. It starts with us. It starts with these collective interconnected movements of people. It starts with us. It starts with just you and me, just regular people, people with a microphone, people without a microphone, people who want to see justice everywhere, everywhere.

Dr. King wanted more than anything to end human suffering and pain. And as Brother Ibram noted, an end to misery and militarism and injustice and poverty and racism, I think that's what made him great. Not necessarily a march or speech that he gave, but his vision for creating a different type of world. And as I say, if you truly want to embody the teachings of MLK, become anti racist, become anti poverty, become anti prejudice, anti war, anti [01:24:00] bombs, become anti segregationist, anti suppression.

Dismantle systems of white supremacy. Don't feed into them. Fight for justice everywhere, not just in your community. These struggles are interconnected and we rely on each other for lasting success and peace. Don't say you're about it, honey. Be about it. And this has been Ayanna Explains It All brought to you by Facts, Figures, and Enlightenment.

Take care.

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