NCRI- "As long as the people of Iran are suffering injustice, we are all suffering injustice," U.S. Congressman John Lewis, a Democrat from Georgia and a distinguished civil rights leader in the 1960s, in a video message told a gathering of more than 70,000 Iranians in Paris on June 28, 2008.
Text of video Message by U.S. Congressman John Lewis:
NCRI- "As long as the people of Iran are suffering injustice, we are all suffering injustice," U.S. Congressman John Lewis, a Democrat from Georgia and a distinguished civil rights leader in the 1960s, in a video message told a gathering of more than 70,000 Iranians in Paris on June 28, 2008.
Text of video Message by U.S. Congressman John Lewis:
I want to take this opportunity to greet the people of Iran who are struggling to build a more just society.
There was a time in the United States just 45 years ago when injustice was the law of the land. It was illegal for people of a different color and different religions to buy a home next door to each other, to go to school together, to sit down and share meal in a restaurant together, or sit next to each other on a public bus.
And even though the 15th amendment gave Americans the right to vote almost 100 years before it was almost impossible for people of color to register and vote in this country just 45 years ago. People were beaten, arrested, taken to jail; they even gave their very lives trying to exercise their right to vote.
Most people in the American south still believe legalized segregation would never change because it has been engrained in out physic and written into the very foundation of our democracy. It has been the order of the day for so long, but all it took was committed and determined people who decided they wanted to make a change. They were ordinary people, with extraordinary vision who dared to believe in their own human dignity. They looked beyond the injustice of human kind to a higher calling and a greater law.
As a participant in the civil rights movement, we truly believe in something we call the beloved community and all inclusive works of society based on simple justice that values the dignity and the worth of every human being.
We believe that is and means were inseparable, we believe that if our goals were peace, that we had to use peaceful means to gain that peace, so stated the teachings of Ghandi, Martin Luther King Junior, and Henry David Leroy.
We use the philosophy of nonviolence to bring about a revolution of values and ideas that change this nation forever. But our struggle is not over; Martin Luther King Jr. once said that a threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. As long as the people of Iran are suffering injustice, we are all suffering injustice.
We may be separated by oceans and seas, there may be thousands of miles between us, but we are all one people, one family, one human family. As your struggle continues know that our thoughts and prayers are with you, that you will over come the differences between you, heal separation that divides you, and remember the eternal bonds that makes us all one. Best wishes for an inspiring and great world conference.
Thank you
