In June of 1941, Britain was 2 years into the war, and things looked bleak. Winston Churchill, in an address to the Allied Countries' Ministers Conference, gave his great speech "Our Solid, Stubborn Strength." He spoke on right and wrong, good and evil, justice and injustice. He ended:
This, then, is the message we send forth today to all the States and nations, bond or free....Lift up your hearts. All will come right. Out of the depths of sorrow and sacrifice will be born again the glory of mankind.
I ask you today to do the same. Lift up your heart. All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. Do not allow evil to triumph. Do not do sit by and do nothing.
You said that Vermont took ten years to take the next step. Lift up your heart. Know that they did us a favor: they tried, and failed, to provide equality with a separate but equal system. It took ten years for them to learn, but they taught us a lesson. True wisdom comes from learning from others' mistakes.
Lift up your heart. When you do the right thing, you can expect to see those on wrong side of the issue outraged, those who are right relieved. When one side is smug and the other is in tears, as you saw yesterday, you know you've done the wrong thing.
You know that to vote for justice will never hurt you. That's been proven throughout the country. Lift up your heart. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, and the common man knows that in his heart.
Last night, I went home and watched footage of Martin Luther King, Jr's most famous speech. Part of it I long ago committed to memory:
We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy....Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.
I don't think anyone could sum it up better. And I have no doubt that if his widow, Coretta, were still of this earth, she would have been in that room with us, and she would have said the same.
But I also noticed something I never had before. In closing, King says:
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.
I realized for the first time the way he constructed what he said. The very first state he mentioned, as a bellwether of freedom and liberty for the rest of the country, was New Hampshire. It is a legacy we should be fiercely proud of, and we should defend it by furthering the cause of equality to all people.
However, while he honored us first and foremost, we were the last to honor him. It took us way too long and is a shameful chapter of our history books. Do we wish to add yet another?
But it's not too late this time. Lift up your heart. Now is the time. Let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.
Before you vote next week, please, consider what your vote really means. Decide whether you wish to obstruct, or whether you wish to redeem yourself and join your colleagues who wish New Hampshire to be on the right side of history. Lift up your heart.
Sincerely,
Ryan Marvin
Manchester NH
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