• Town Talk

This past week we honored the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I want to speak to that dream he had because we have seen evidence in the week that the racism we think we have defeated is still alive and being used as a political tool. 

On Aug. 28, 1963, as part of Dr. King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech, he said: “In a sense we have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be granted the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”  

We have come so far Ń and yet have so far to go. Just witness the astounding remarks made this past week from Rev. Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh. 

Robertson used his television show to accuse Haitians of bringing the massive earthquake on themselves because they had sold their souls to the devil during the country’s colonial uprising. How horrid and sinister such an accusation. 

As a minister myself, I am appalled that a so-called religious person could make such condemnation on innocent people. As a former Peace Corps volunteer and aid worker, who has seen misery up close, who has lived and worked in impoverished countries, I do not know what deity Robertson claims. Mine certainly does not target individual people and countries.

However, I am not here to engage in a theological dissertation. I consider Robertson’s remarks to be those of someone out of place with what we as humans are called to be: compassionate and just. Those are the elements that Dr. King emphasized.

If that was not enough, Rush Limbaugh inferred that President Obama’s call for help to Haiti was merely political so he could “use it to burnish his credentials with minorities in this country and around the world, and to accuse Republicans of having no compassion.”

Actually, President Obama called on the nation as a whole to respond to the earthquake. Former Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton are involved. 

When Dr. King wrote his letter from the Birmingham jail, he had been criticized by his fellow clergy and the upstanding officials around him for being somewhere he didn’t belong. 

He said: “Beyond this, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the eighth century prophets left their little villages and carried their ‘thus saith the Lord’ far beyond the boundaries of the their hometowns; and just as the apostle Paul left his little village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to practically every hamlet and city of the Graeco-Roman world, I too am compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my particular hometown. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.”

So whether you are a Haitian child who has just lost every relative she has, or whether you are a small business owner in Colorado who had to close your trade, injustice still exists in the world. Not because of any deal you made or bad word you said of another but because there are disasters that happen outside our control every day. 

We in Colorado can do our part by recommitting ourselves every day to making sure that our voices and those of our families, colleagues and neighbors are heard in the political process. And yes, I can spare a few dollars to the American Red Cross to make sure that water and food get to homeless people. Or you can do like my friend, Beth Klein, and get two planes to Haiti to bring back 150 orphans to new homes.

Let’s not only remember Dr. King’s words. Let’s live by those principles that say everyone is my sister and brother.

Pat Waak is chair of the Colorado Democratic Party. The views expressed in this guest editorial are those of Waak’s and not necessarily those of the Denver Daily News. Respond to Waak at editor@thedenverdailynews.com.

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