“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice” was Martin Luther King’s own succinct summation of sentiments echoing those of Theodore Parker.
I’m hugely thankful for the people who have continued to insist on living by the principles that this nation was founded on — “Conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the Proposition that all men are created equal.” The Abolitionists and the Suffragettes and the Civil Rights Activists made the words “all men” truly include all human beings, no matter what gender or color they were. I’m convinced that “government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth”, but I’m a little worried about its health currently here in the United States. I’ve been listening to Marianne Williamson’s talk in Berkeley about the “occupy movement.” She retells our history and says that many people warned us that a lot of money in the hands of a few people was most emphatically NOT democracy.
She also said, of our trying to take on the 1%, “THEY have the power, THEY have the technology, THEY have the money … what do we have? We have what the Abolitionists had, what the Suffragettes had, what the Civil Rights activists had… a better idea.”
She repeated my favorite quote from Martin Luther King, “The arc of the moral universe … bends toward justice.” After reading “The Better Angels of Our Nature”, I see that that statement is not just a visionary’s hope, but a truth founded on our whole mental-emotional history from the Stone Age onward.
She also read Dr. King’s principles of nonviolence, and said how important it was that people in the “Occupy” movement learn and practice these.
She reminded us, and I remind you of that wonderful quote from Gandhi:
First they IGNORE you
Then they LAUGH at you
Then they FIGHT you
Then YOU WIN