Let’s have a dream for our country!
Tizibt M.(01-21-08)
Monday, January
21, 2008 is a day on which Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday is observed
throughout the United States of America. Whenever we remember the great civil
rights leader, the popular expression ‘I Have a Dream’ comes up. This is a
popular name given to the historic speech Dr. King gave on August 28, 1963 in a
civil rights march in Washington D.C. He used this notable expression in
connection with his vision regarding the harmonious and amicable coexistence of
people of all races in the U.S., which is considered as a beacon of democracy
and equality. Even if Dr. King was assassinated forty years ago, the impact of
the movement he spearheaded has culminated in a situation where an African
American is racing to the White House giving a formidable challenge to other
presidetial hopefuls. Some of the key statements in Dr. King’s ‘I Have a Dream’
speech were the following:
-
“I have a
dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of
its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal.’”
-
“I have a
dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they
will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
-
“I have a
dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and
the sons of former slave owners will they be able to sit down together at a
table of brotherhood.”
Contextual
differences between the United States and Ethiopia with regard to the
aforementioned issues notwithstanding, Ethiopia of the past eras was not a home
equal to all of its children. The slave-master kind of relationship is not a
distant memory. Millions of Ethiopians were not on equal footing with a few
others, and were in fact treated as second class citizens within their own
country. Despite the pessimists whose wish and hallucination (for lack of a better term) to our
country is full of doom and gloom, our country is on the right direction with
regard to development, prosperity, and democratic order even if much remains to
be done. Along with the basic premise underlying Dr. King’s vision, the rights
of nations, nationalities, and peoples of our country have been respected as
enshrined in the Ethiopian Constitution. This truth is not palatable to the
diehards, who have been bent upon doing all they could to undermine the good
work the incumbent government and ruling party have been doing especially in
recent years.
Even if our
country is the only country in Africa (and the only black nation more broadly)
which has not been colonized , even if she had served as a symbol of freedom to
victims of colonial rule, and even if our country was the prime architect of
the struggle for extricating other African countries out of the yoke of
colonialism, she has been very unfortunate with regard to her own children in
the past few decades who turned against her rather than committing themselves
to her defence (‘yenat t’ut nekashoch’). As a motherland, she bled for so
long as her children were engaged in civil war in an attempt to decimate each
other for political power. Let’s say enough to hatred and hate politics, enough
to violence, enough to war, enough to arrogance, enough to vengence, enough to
envy and jealousy, enough to animosity, enough to all sorts of evil behaviors
and evil acts. Evil only breeds evil. Let love take the place of hate,
tolerance the place of bigotry, patience the place of enragement, contentment
the place of disatisfaction, bliss the place of sorrow, fun the place of
misery, optimism the place of pessimism, vision the place of hallucination,
negotiation the place of arrogance, brotherhood and sisterhood the place of
animosity, altruism the place of selfishness, etc. to the benefit of our country,
which we all love and cherish dearly.
As we observe Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, let’s remember his legacy and express our
dream for the good of our country. Here I offer my eight-point dream to our
beloved country and other fellow Ethiopians of goodwill may follow suit:
May God bless
Ethiopia and Ethiopians!
With lots of love
and respect!