Coming this fall from Author Rev. Paul J. Bern, the Fourth Edition of his landmark 2011 book, "The Middle and Working Class Manifesto", the book of dissidence for all dissidents everywhere! Do you wish to become the change you seek, but don't know where to begin? Giving this book a good read first will definitely help clarify things for you!
(1st edition cover shown)
I
Dare To Dream
(excerpt
from “The
Middle and Working Class Manifesto 4th Edition”
by Pastor Paul J. Bern, in commemoration of the 55th anniversary of Rev. Dr. King's "I have a Dream" speech)
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 who need it, 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. 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 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.
I
dare to dream of a new America with a robust and viable economy. That
is why I have been insisting on a $14.00
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 is looking 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, with a new and more intensive school year, that has
viable replacements for standardized testing, and where class size is
limited by law.
I dare
to dream of a country where teachers, police officers and
firefighters make what their Congressional representatives make, and
vice verse.
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 legislated
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 any currently illegal drugs having medicinal value, such as
marijuana, psylocibin and peyote are legalized, regulated and taxed
by appropriate legislation.
Finally,
I dare to dream of a world in which all this is easily financially
achievable, since all the money that is being wasted currently on the
CIA's clandestine wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, and to a lesser
extent in Pakistan, Somalia, 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 (don't
forget we've been there for 17 years) 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 high school, plus 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, especially 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, Tunisia and Somalia, to name a few, so I
am telling you that there will be an American Spring, Summer of Fall
in her near future. In fact, I'm surprised it hasn't already begun.
Beginning in 2011 with the start-up of the “Occupy” and “99%”
Movements, of which I am still 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 in a bloodless coup 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. Who is with me today?
You
have just read the end of chapter 9 of my book, “The
Middle and Working Class Manifesto 4th Edition” by Rev. Paul J. Bern. To visit my author
landing page, go to www.authorrevpauljbern.com.
Pre-ordering available starting in October. Thanks so much. Shalom!
