DEMO

It is not a day for politics.  I have saved this one opportunity, my only event of today,  to speak briefly to you about this mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives.

It is not the concern of any one race.  The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown.  They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings, loved and needed.  No one – no matter where he lives or what he does – can be certain who next will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed.  And yet it goes on and on in this country of ours.

Why?  What has violence ever accomplished?  What has it ever created? 

Whenever any American’s life is taken by another American unnecessarily – whether it is done in the name of the law or in defiance of the law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence – whenever we tear at the fabric of our lives which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, whenever we do this...then the whole nation is degraded.

Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike.

Too often we honor swagger and bluster and the wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of other human beings.

But this much is clear; violence breeds violence, repression breeds retaliation, and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our souls.

For when you teach a man to hate and to fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies that he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your home or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies – to be met not with cooperation but with conquest, to be subjugated and mastered.

We learn, at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens, alien men with whom we share a city, but not a community, men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in a common effort. We learn to share only a common fear – only a common desire to retreat from each other – only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force.

Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done is too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in this land of ours. Of course we cannot vanish it with a program, nor with a resolution.

But we can perhaps remember – if only for a time – that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life, that they seek – as do we – nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment that they can.

Surely this bond of common fate, surely this bond of common goals, can begin to teach us something. Surely we can learn, at least, to look around at those around us as fellow men and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our hearts brothers and countrymen once again.

What would this world have been like if he had lived?
Kenny Morse