We Have A Responsibility
August 28, 2009
Robert E. Lee Memorial, Arlington, Virginia
(Video Link)

We are here today at the Robert E. Lee Memorial to remember a historic day, August 28, 1963. On that historic day, 46 years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and thousands of black Americans gathered together down the hill at the Lincoln Memorial calling for the equal rights and liberty that were guaranteed to them in our founding Declaration of Independence that defines who and what we are as a nation.

While Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said on August 28, 1963 – “I Have A Dream,” on this August 28 – we must say “We Have A Responsibility”… to ensure equality, liberty, universal human rights, and a commitment of love to one another. We have a responsibility to rebuild our society with a commitment to making the human rights of equality and liberty our first priority, never our last.

We have a responsibility to allow our nation to heal from the divisions that we once had, and put an end to the unhealthy practices of those who seek to reopen old wounds that should have healed decades ago. We have a responsibility to challenge those who seek to parade about and wax nostalgic over our past differences and our hate towards one another. We must heal as one nation, undivided, and indivisible – with common bonds of human rights and human dignity. The pride we must seek is in our future together in shared equality and liberty.

We are not North and South, free states and slave states, abolitionists and slave masters, Union and Confederacy – that war has been over since August 20, 1866. We are only one nation, one people, one flag, and one United States of America. While our history of the past is important, what truly matters is the future that we will make together.

We have a responsibility to our children and to our children’s children – to offer them something new to be nostalgic about – not over our past differences – but about how we were willing to grow and mature as a people and nation, so that we could release our past differences, and promote symbols of unity, of equality, and of liberty together.

We have a responsibility to challenge those who would use symbols of division to continue to spread hate and to challenge our shared values of equality and liberty. Reverend Timothy James of the Disciples of Christ recently stated that “for African Americans the confederate flag is a system of terror, oppression, separation, and racism.” We shouldn’t need to be reminded of this. We have seen the use of the Confederate symbol of division used over and over again in our nation. We have seen the Confederate symbol of division used by the Ku Klux Klan. We have seen the Confederate symbol of division used by white supremacist organizations. Most recently, we have seen the Confederate symbol of division in the tragic terrorist attack in June on the Holocaust Memorial Museum. In Virginia and throughout our nation today, there are over 90 Neo-Confederate hate groups that use that symbol of our past divisions to spread hate and to attack our shared values of equality and liberty.

We have a responsibility to reach out for our future together. We have a responsibility to urge those who cling to our divisions of the past to heal and join us as a united and free people, with equality, liberty, and justice for all.

We have a responsibility to make such unity on equality and liberty a priority in our lives and in our children’s lives.

We have seen the need for such a renewed priority to challenge the racial hate that continues to be unashamedly promoted in public platforms in Virginia.

We have seen the need for such a renewed priority for equality to challenge the spreading of racial hate to children here in Virginia.

We have seen the need for a renewed priority of building our common bonds to challenge the growth of groups that promote the values of the Confederacy here in Virginia today.

Our children deserve better than this. Our nation must be responsible for better than this.

We need to decide – right now – that we will not let the disease of our past divisions and of racial hate to spread to another generation.

We need to decide – this day – that will once and for all bring an end to this disease and to this war among ourselves, and embrace the peace, the harmony, the justice, and the equality – that must be the legacy that we hand down to the next generation.

Forty-six years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stood down the hill and spoke of his dream. Now it is time for us to make that dream our responsibility and our legacy as a nation.

To do so, we need a new commitment to symbols that will unite, rather than divide us. We need a new symbol of human rights that all those who come to our nation’s capital will see up on the hill when they stand where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stood forty-six years ago today. We need a symbol that does more than remind us of our past, but points to our future together.

So we propose, on this historic day, that right here where are standing now at the Robert E. Lee Memorial – we create a new monument.

We propose that we create a new monument not to any man or to any woman – but a monument to every man and every woman. We propose that we create a new monument that doesn’t recognize just one race or ethnicity, but a monument to every race and every ethnicity. We propose the creation of a new monument not to any human being, but a monument to all human beings. We propose the creation of a new monument that truly represents the very idea of America itself – a commitment to equality, liberty, and universal human rights for all people.

We have a responsibility.

We have a responsibility to all those who need hope and inspiration.

We have a responsibility to all those who seek justice.

We have a responsibility to set an example for our children, their children, and the world.

We have a responsibility to make certain that all those who come to our nation’s capital never fail to understand the idea of America that is greater than all of our leaders and history combined.

We have a responsibility and a historic opportunity to challenge our government to create a new monument on this hill overlooking Washington DC – so that all those who visit can look up towards the sky and say – THAT is what America is really about – our universal human rights of equality and liberty.

We have a responsibility to Equality And Liberty.