This speech delivered to over 250,000 civil rights supporters on August 28th 1963 became a calling card for a massive civil rights movement. What may seem shocking is that King's prepared speech never included the words "I have a dream" and was largely a negative outlook of the segregated America of the time. The dream part of King's speech is largely considered improvised on the spot and is possibly prompted by Mahalia Jackson's cry: "Tell them about the dream."
So what if King never spoke about his dream and only spoke of the nightmares of the time? Without the vision and hope King instilled with those 4 famous words it can be questionable whether the civil rights movement would have succeeded in changing public policy or at the very least prolonged it's success.
If you're an avid reader of this blog you may be asking, what in the world does this have to do with the environment? One of the largest critiques of the environmentalist movement is the doomsday esk rhetoric spoken by a majority of it's contributors. There are major systematic problems in our society including (but not limited to) corporate influence on policy and the electoral process, dangers of unregulated capitalism, western culture's obsession with stuff and it's relation to the exploitation of developing countries, the dangers that nationalism imposes on equality and universal cultural acceptance, and the continued development of nuclear and biological weapons that not only pose a threat to our continued existence but to the future of the planet. As famous physicist and environmentalist Carl Sagan once said "The trap door beneath our feet swings open and we find ourselves in bottomless free fall."
Our world is in need of great people like Martin Luther King Jr to make the unpopular stands, to stand up for liberty and inspire millions to follow in their footsteps. But preaching about nightmares is not the way to do it. How can we possibly expect people to start caring about the world around them when most of them have enough troubles in just getting by?
Instead of talking about all the things that plague are world and how we aren't doing enough, lets talk about our dreams of a better world. Let's craft actual solutions to real world problems. Imagine a world in which we didn't define ourselves by our different colors, cultures or opinions but instead focused on the sometimes forgotten fact that we are all human beings and inhabitants of Earth. Think of what we could achieve, what we could become!
So I ask you, what's your dream?
