I only have two minutes
When Black Florida teenager Trayvon Martin was shot and killed by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman in 2012, outraged students of color came together in Florida to form the Dream Defenders and organize to win justice for Trayvon. In July, Zimmerman was acquitted, and the Dream Defenders traveled from campuses across Florida to occupy the state Capitol building in Tallahassee. Among their demands were repeal of Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law, ending racial profiling and dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline.
On August 28, President Barack Obama and other political figures were part of a celebration at the Lincoln Monument to mark the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, where Martin Luther King gave his "I Have a Dream" speech. was invited to speak as a representative of the Dream Defenders, but was cut from the program at the last minute. Below is the text of the speech he planned to give.
BY THE time we finish, another Black boy will lay bleeding in the streets of Chicago, and as we rest our heads tonight, 300,000 of our veterans lay homeless, and I would love to explain how the hate we spread abroad is the reason that hatred washes on our shores--but I only have two minutes.
And I could tell you that Philadelphia just closed 23 of its schools at the same time it makes way for a $400 million state-of-the-art prison, and that North Carolina and Florida continue to silence their citizens at the ballot box--but I only have two minutes.
I could tell you how as we celebrate Dr. King's dream, over 400,000 of our immigrant brothers and sisters languish away in privately owned detention camps, and how we still find our queer brothers and sisters imprisoned in the shadows of closets--but I only have two minutes.
I'd tell you how our mothers, sisters, wives and daughters still earn less, have no control over their bodies, and are traded and trafficked like slaves, or that it's easier for someone to buy a gun and put it to their head than it is to diagnose the illness within it--but I only have two minutes.
If there was time, I'd tell you that millions of young people and queer people and poor people and people of color are asking what we do with this anger, fear, disappointment and frustration, this mad that we feel? But, alas, I only have one more minute.
And with it, this last minute of our conversation, I'd like to tell you that, though it may seem that all is lost, that there is a generation of dreamers, fighters, defenders, lovers builders bubbling, bubbling, bubbling beneath the rubble.
And beneath your feet, you may feel a collective quaking, tremors of a sleeping giant awakening. Emanating from fault lines at the Arizona-Mexico border, and Raleigh and Austin, and Cleveland, Ohio, and Chicago, Illinois, and Tallahassee, Florida.
And we've come here from every crack, crease and crevice of our country to our Capitol to say: For all whose cares have been our concern, we're ready. We will not be co-opted, will not be bought. But we're ready.
And for those that doubt our energy and discipline. We're ready.
For those that believe that future fingers may fail the torch. Fear not. We're ready.
For all those that believe in the power of nonviolence and love as unconquerable. We're ready.
Fifty years ago, a man told us of a promised land. And for 50 years, we've wandered and wondered. "Where are the youth?" is a constant whisper in our ears.
And so we have come, asking neither permission nor questions, but to say that we are here. Believing indeed that we have a beautiful history, and that the one we will build in the future will astonish the world.
And we're ready.
May the outcome always prosper over income. Peace over profit. Revolution over revenue and all peace and power to the people. For anyone who doesn't believe us, just watch.
We're ready.
