Independence Day: We Shall Overcome

by S. Paul Forrest

Since Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke the historic words of "We Shall Overcome", the United States has indeed changed. Now, black persons, our African brothers and sisters freed from direct slavery within an unfair system, are no longer the only ones being oppressed. America has moved on toward the embrace of oppression of people of all colors and cultures living below a certain level of income and influence. We the People have now been sold into an indirect system of slavery.

No longer are most people in America imprisoned with physical chains. Our physical bindings have been replaced with economic ones. Everyday, We the People are faced with a Congressional level of totalitarianism that writes laws to protect their own corporate interests; to hide and protect their financial records; to give themselves the right to enact war without consent of the people and to continue the policies favoring only the few while leaving the rest of us to fend for ourselves.

Our State level leaders as well, are stripping away our labor protections, our social protections, our education, our park systems and our environmental protections to allow corporate tax breaks and incentives. They will tell us that it is for the purposes of job creation but in the enacting of these “cuts”, they have guaranteed more unemployment and the increased degradation of our standard of living.

Extensions of unemployment benefits have been cut, food stamps and welfare are under fire, social security and health care and even a woman’s right to choose for herself in the matter of her own body in a time of pregnancy, are all slowly being eliminated.

Everyday, our jobs become fewer and our security becomes threatened not from other nations but from within our own and because of it, the people are becoming restless. Our "leaders" and their corporate bosses are making moves everyday to enact a new form of slavery while their media deceivers tell us that the voices for a renewal of Liberty standing against this new, repressive regime are the voices of treasonous, anti-American radicals who only want to kill God and destroy our great land.

Everyday, as We the People sit and do nothing, these same "leaders" enact laws to spy on those who would stand up against this new form of tyranny and have erected institutions and made plans to hold us if we dare speak out and organize against them. Out of this new system, the police state grows by leaps and bounds to control We the People as we awaken to this tyranny; this farce of government; this new regime reminiscent of the English Crown against whom we Declared our Independence so long ago.

Everyday, we listen to the false, hateful rhetoric of condemnation of those who are true patriots fighting for our Liberty and everyday so many follow blindly while singing in the chorus of fools. And everyday, the nation is divided along statist lines delineated by the blood of soldiers and the rates of the new homeless forced out of every town and city so those still believing the lie that is America, do not notice the change themselves and awaken to it.

The Christian Right stands up and preaches of a loss of God while they themselves condone and support this new oppression. They have very skillfully put into place a false belief in Liberty’s reclamation. Their voices are heard in the Tea Party caucus as they promise change and a return to a time of Liberty that our forefathers envisioned for this country while in the interim, willingly take campaign contributions from corporate pirates and preach a sermon of the worst of the Sadducees. Change was promised before but now, change is all that is left in our pockets.

The time has come my brothers and sisters, to reclaim this land for ourselves, We the People, and leave behind the remnants of this new tyranny.  The time has come to stand up for what is right in this country instead of following the Sheppard like mindless sheep toward the slaughter house of our American Dream.

The time has come for those who would oppress us to know that We the People have before and will again, protect our Nation from this freedom-destroying regime of oppression. The time has come remember the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; “We Shall Overcome”.