Amanda Jung/Staff Writer
In a world that has increasingly become more accepting of cultural diversity and of people from different backgrounds, it’s hard to believe that there was a time when African-Americans were not free.
Martin Luther King Jr. said it himself; “one hundred years” after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, “the life of the negro [was] still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination.”
King is not only a spokesperson for people of color, however, but for anyone with a dream. His dream was quite obvious; for everyone to be equal, no matter what race or color they identify as.
This man served as a role model for so many people, when America was filled with sadness and with no way to move forward as a person of color.
Today, he still continues to fuel dreams and motivate people to go after what they believe in. This is definitely the case for me. Personally, I took the underlying message of King’s famous speech to be that we need to be able to peacefully coexist.
This is something, that whether you recognize it or not, we have trouble doing. Do not get me wrong, because this nation has made great strides and even better progress, but with recent events, there has been extreme hatred towards one another and on top of that, fear.
With many lessons in history class about this incredible activist, it has only taught me to fight for what is right. In my case, that is the environment.
As we need to peacefully coexist with each other, we need to do the same thing with the earth. As King wanted everyone to be equal with each other, I think it’s about time to start treating the Earth as our equal as it has done so much for us.
“I have a dream today” King once said. I have a dream where everyone will think about the food that they put into their bodies and how it affects the environment.
I have a dream today. One where people recycle frequently and produce less waste. A dream where people conserve energy and carpool with each other to school. A dream where people put the environment first, with every decision that they make.
There was a time where this was not a priority. Maybe you didn’t believe that your decisions could have such a big impact on the planet.
Well, this could have been the same case for when King was fighting for equal rights for everyone. Perhaps not everyone felt affected by this issue because they were not a person of color.
We cannot adopt these attitudes or beliefs. King was a man with great hopes and aspirations and if he has taught you anything, it should be to fight for what is right. There is so much that we can learn for this man. Without him, we might not have known the definition of justice.
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Image retrieved from Flickr.
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