Letter from the Editor

Dear Boise,

If you have any shred of soul in you that allows you to be inspired, how can you not get shivers when you listen to recordings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speeches? His words forged iron revolutions in the Civil Rights Movement. His dream, relayed to the world in his “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech, spurred the United States’ and the worldwide civil rights movement.

But dreams conflict with reality. The imagination it takes to dream of equality does not run parallel to actual actions. The truth is we cannot merely take King’s dream and his energy and reflect on what he did. Is there not room for more? Is it not the responsibility of this generation to continue his nonviolent protests against bigotry and racism?

There are little things we can do today to help make this “dream” a reality. We can support economic reform against policies that seem to unfairly target poverty-stricken areas of this country. The one thing that divides Americans (even more than the color of their skin) is the numbers in their bank account (or lack thereof). Dr. King wasn’t just talking about race. He was fighting for fair voting policies. We can question when the government re-districts voting blocs to help certain parties. We can seriously question whether or not all votes get counted, especially with a presidential election on the horizon and voting disasters in the near past (remember how Al Gore won Florida, then didn’t, then did, then didn’t?).

King fought hard against segregation, without violence. Nothing in this world seems less fair than to allow people certain rights and deny it to others because of the color of their skin. Despite King’s struggle for fair-housing reform, lenders still factor race into their rates.

When King was assassinated, America lost a tremendous leader and motivator. Perhaps that is what we lost most, the motivation to make his dream come true. King refused to merely believe in his dream. Instead he spent his shortened life trying like hell to make it come true. When this country lost him, it lost the push from behind we may have needed to carry on protesting the wrongs this country enacts upon its people, not just racially and economically, but culturally as well. Instead of seeing children of all colors playing together, we see people with labels, that is, segregation via organization. Political pundits last week sought to see how blacks supported Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama in Michigan, how Latinos affected the Nevada vote and we haven’t seen the rest yet. How dare it become news that certain groups vote a certain way, especially when voting is a personal right.

Unions ask their members to vote for candidates who help their cause and make campaign promises, but what happened to a world without labels?

Is it fair we only celebrate King in January, rather than honor him all our lives by carrying on the work he was not allowed to complete?

We must wake up from our notions of what King’s dream could have been and begin living for waking moments where we may strive to make his dream come true.

Sincerely,

Dustin Lapray

Editor-in-Chief

Dustin Lapray

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