I
Dare To Dream
The
march of economic inequality, from which springs the source of
racism, poverty, crime, violence, and lack of access to healthcare
and higher education, has become the new civil rights issue of the
21st
century. (I like to call it Rev. Dr. MLK, Jr. 2.0.) King's dream of
unconditional equality throughout the country can finish becoming a
reality when the economic barriers that we all face on a daily basis
finally come down for good, like an economic Berlin Wall circa 1989.
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke to the masses during the 1963
civil rights march on Washington and said, “I have a dream...”.
By writing and publishing these words it is my intent to help take up
where King's Dream left off, and to do anything I can to help finish
the job that he started. And so let me slightly change that to, “I
dare to dream”.
I
dare to dream of a world in which the gap between rich and poor is
gone forever. We all deserve to live in a world where wealth has
been redistributed in a peaceful and orderly manner and not by the
barrel of a gun. I dare to dream of a country where wealth has been
redistributed in 4 ways. First, every worker earns a living wage so
poverty can be eliminated. Second, free higher education and
vocational retraining must be available to every worker for life,
including daycare available to all, that would be based on the
worker's or student's ability to pay on a sliding scale, because
everyone has the right to better themselves at will. Third, I
envision an America where quality health care is available to every
worker at nominal cost for life. Single-payer healthcare based on the
current Medicare model must not be reserved only for those who can
afford it, but it must be a fundamental human right for all ages. I
dare to dream of an America where there will be no such thing as
someone without health insurance, where every citizen will have
lifetime healthcare and prescription drug coverage without
qualification, and where there will be the fewest sick days for
American workers and their children of any country in the developed
world. Fourth, “we the people” demand the abolition of the
federal tax code, including elimination of the despised federal
withholding tax, which would give every American worker or business
owner an immediate 18% pay raise.
I
dare to dream of a new America with a robust and viable economy. That
is why I have been insisting on a $12.00
per hour minimum wage since 2010.
I dare to dream of a new America where education will be subsidized
from the cradle to the grave so that the US develops the most
formidable work force the world has ever seen. I dare to dream of an
America where all workers have the right to organize, to a flexible
work week and to paid family or maternity leave. Most other developed
countries already do this. The US is the only exception and that has
got to change. The only remaining question in my mind is whether we
can accomplish this peacefully or otherwise, and it looks more and
more to me like it will be the latter.
I
dare to dream of an America where affordable housing is the law of
the land, where home ownership becomes a right and not a privilege so
we can wipe out homelessness, and where the price of a house is
limited to the sum total of ten years income of any given individual
or household purchasers. I insist on a country where home ownership
isn't part of an exclusive club with the highest “credit scores”.
It is, and must become, a basic human right. Even the cave men lived
in caves of their own!
I
dare to dream of a country with new public works programs that put an
end to unemployment forever so the USA can have full employment all
the time. America's infrastructure needs to be rebuilt, and its inner
cities are in dire need of an overhaul. What a better way to
accomplish this!
I
dare to dream of a new America with an all-new public school and
university system that has an Internet-based curriculum that can be
updated at will, and that is second to none in the developed world,
with a new and more intensive school year, and that has viable
replacements for standardized testing, and where class size is
limited by law. I dare to dream of a country where teachers make what
their Congressional representatives make, and vice versa.
I
dare to dream of a new nation where unconditional equality is the law
of the land for every citizen without exception, and this will
include economic equality. I dare to dream of a new America where
there is no more income tax, no capital gains tax, no alternative
minimum tax, no estate tax, no self-employment tax, and where
families and businesses can have a tax free income unless they are
very wealthy. In its place would be a national sales tax, such as a
Consumption Tax, where everyone pays proportionately the same tax
rate on only what they consume, plus an “excess wealth tax” for
persons with annual incomes exceeding $3 million, and for businesses
with annual proceeds exceeding $300 million, so America's budget can
be balanced and fair.
I
dare to dream of a better USA where personal privacy is the law of
the land, where identity theft is a thing of the past, and where it
will be illegal for employers to obtain the credit files or credit
scores of any job applicant.
I
dare to dream of a more compassionate America where children have the
right to a challenging and progressive learning environment, and
where kids will be legally guaranteed freedom from hunger, sickness
and violence, and where all God's children will have the right to
safe adoption, foster care and day care.
I
dare to dream of an all-new voting system, including the abolition of
the elitist Electoral College, that is Internet-based, paperless, and
that can be accessed from any location using any computer or wireless
device, instead of wasting our time and fuel and losing work time
going to polling stations, and instead of using unreliable and
unsecured voting machines.
I
dare to dream of an America of integrity where all of the dirty
corporate money and all the filthy lucre is abolished from our
political process. I dare to dream of an America where the Wall
Street shysters who crashed the US economy are brought to justice,
and where the keys to all of the fraudulently foreclosed homes are
returned to their rightful owners.
I
dare to dream of the end to America's sinister war on drugs, where
all convicted nonviolent drug offenders can qualify for alternative
sentences for their offenses so they may obtain early release, and
where all the currently illegal drugs are legalized, regulated and
taxed by appropriate legislation.
Finally,
I dare to dream of a world in which all this is easily financially
achievable because all the money that is being wasted currently on
the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, and to a lesser extent in
Pakistan, Libya and elsewhere will be redirected towards all these
dreams that I have just mentioned. The money is already there, its
just being budgeted in all the wrong places. Let me tell you why.
If
the US military took all the money it spends occupying Afghanistan
for just one day and put it into an interest-bearing account, there
would be enough money available to send every American school kid
from the first grade up to senior year in high school through 4 years
of college fully paid for, including tuition, dorms, books, food,
access to the Internet and to public transportation. Here's another
example: If the US government took all that money set aside from one
days worth of military expenditures in Afghanistan alone, there would
be enough money to build a 2,500 square feet house, fully furnished
and stocked with groceries, with all the utilities already turned on,
for every homeless person in the US including all the homeless kids.
That's how easily we can end homelessness in the richest country in
the world.
Just
as surely as there was an Arab Spring beginning in 2011 that is still
ongoing in Egypt, Algeria, Yemen and Syria, to name a few, uprisings
of the people throughout North Africa and the Middle East that
toppled one dictator after another, so I am telling you that there
will be an American Spring no later than 2014. Beginning in 2011 with
the start-up of the “Occupy” and “99%” Movements, of which I
am proud to be a part, this uprising of the American people against
the top 1% will explode like an atomic mushroom cloud over the
American political and economic elite, obliterating them all without
anyone having fired a single shot so that the remaining 99% of us can
peacefully take back what has been stolen from us over the last 100
years. We can only accomplish this by uniting together as one and
acting as one body to break free from the shackles of oppression that
have us all enslaved.
You
have just read the end of chapter 9 of my book, “The
Middle and Working Class Manifesto”
(Salt of the Earth Publishing, 470 pages, $14.95) To order your copy,
go to www.sotepublishing.com.
Thanks so much. Shalom!
