In celebration of freedom and equality for all communities across the country today celebrates the birth of Martin Luther King Jr. . He spoke about the need for income equality to exist for true equality for minority groups to be likely. Civil rights are about the right to vote and be represented equally in government.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Martin Luther King Jr., Sculpture from the Remember Them Monuments at the Henry J Kaiser Memorial Park, See:
Education about our rights and about government is necessary to be able to recognize when civil rights abuses are occurring. Lesson plans and activities for students or other learners are available on the website i civics.org https://www.icivics.org/
It is the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr’s death, may he rest in peace. My dream is simple – promoting an equal opportunity for all of us to life, liberty, and the ability to pursue happiness. During my fifteen years working with families it became clear over the years that a larger percentage of parents and their children were having to cope with more severe health issues, both acute, short-term, and chronic, long-term, health issues whether due to infection, cancer, autoimmune, or other illnesses, or birth defects or issues related to being born prematurely.
My own health has always been not great or at least not as good as what seemed normal for my peer group, from childhood, so I have always valued health and knew that you can’t just get it back from a prescription or visit to the doctor’s office. So sharing health information with others has always been important to me and I appreciated my job for both the opportunity to share with others but also to learn from others about the strategies that helped them or their families to cope with I’ll health or to maintain good health – and I passed forward the helpful advice when it was confirmed in research fact checking and seemed appropriate to share.
In more recent years my health has improved in some ways but overall the diagnosis that I received is not good. A few year’s ago this was made clear to me when a life insurance agent quoted a policy for me based on their estimate for my expected lifespan at 62 years old. This year I turned 52 , so any hope I have to share health information needs to be based on that ten year estimate, while I am also working on beating those odds. I didn’t buy the policy but in my family living to 80 or 90 or 104 is the norm. Only one of my grandparents passed away in their 50s or 60s. So my work on healthy bean soup or healthy cookies is for my own health and I share the information in case it might be helpful for other’s use in their equal opportunity pursuit of life, library and happiness. We don’t all have equal opportunities to clean air, water, and adequate food, and increased stress levels can also make maintaining health more difficult so any help I received is greatly appreciated and thanks is inadequate. The ten year plan is flexible, I do what I can as I learn and have time and resources to share information, and the age 62 estimate is based on standard medical care. I have already done better than standard with my dietary approach to health as I only needed less than two months supply of the potentially livet damaging medication that is one of the standard ones prescribed for my diagnosis. I’ve been in remission ever since – but with a few additional health issues that I’ve coped with and a significantly restricted diet from typical. So easy would not be a good description but worth it would be.
Hopefully my flexible ten year plan will extend into a twenty year plan, and a thirty, forty, and fifty year plan, and maybe I will dance at my hundred year birthday like my grandmother, but maybe isn’t as solid as today- today I take care of my health and I wish condolences to the surviving family and friends of Martin Luther King Jr.. He did get the opportunity to dance at his hundredth birthday but maybe some of his family dance at their own in his memory.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. – Martin Luther King, Jr..
Disclosure: This information is being provided for educational purposes within the guidelines of Fair Use. While I am a Registered Dietitian it is not intended to provide individualized health care guidance. Please seek an individual health care professional for individualized health care guidance. Thanks.
August 28, 1963 – ‘We have come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now’
“This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning, “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.“
“And if America is to be a great nation this must become true.“
So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!
Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!
But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!“
-An excerpt from Martin Luther King, Jr’s I Have a Dream speech was included in a commemorative article in The Guardian Aug 28, 2008, which was published on the 45th anniversary of the speech.
-The line “Let freedom ring” is from the song “My Country, Tis of Thee,” also known as “America,” which was written by Samuel Francis Smith, Wikipedia.
-The lyrics to the “old Negro spiritual” referred to in the speech are thought to be from a song called “Free at Last” according to a reeply on a public Q/A forum. The lyrics are included along with the full text of Martin Luther King Jr’s speech on the forum.quoteland.com webpage.
“Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”
Such a beautiful reminder to value each other and our freedom on this Independence Day, two hundred and forty one years since the first fourth of July celebration.
Disclaimer: Opinions are my own and the information is provided for educational purposes within the guidelines of fair use.
The little girl carrying a big poster in the photo at this link is not a typical Humanitarian Relief worker but she carries a powerful message, “Hate breeds hate.” The exact quote from the poster was not found in an online search, but the search engine did lead to a quote by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. with a similar concept, “Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” The passage also includes the phrase “violence multiplies violence,” read the rest of the passage here : [http://www.drmartinlutherkingjr.com/mlkquotes.htm]
