When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual,

Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

So it's Martin Luther King, Jr. day here in the states, and last night I was watching The Boondocks. The premise of the episode was that MLKjr didn't die when he was shot, but he went into a coma. And woke up in present day to see how far we as a society had come, and how far we haven't come. I think the most shocking bit of it for me was a moment when he was being interviewed for his opinion on how the US should react to 9/11. He said what one would expect a non-violent leader to say. He quoted the bible, saying "turn the other cheek" and was subsequently labeled a traitor.

It made me think. A lot. About the state of the world. About where we are, where we should be, what we should be doing. About all the people so caught up with their personal worship of their bank accounts, they forget about the people dying of exposure in their own neighborhood.

This could be a perfect place for me to wax religious and express the fact that I'm ready to go back to church, but that's not my point here.

My point is this: Forget yourself for one minute. Forget your troubles. Forget your blessings. Forget your friends and family. Forget your bills and your job. Not forever, just for one minute. Sixty, ever so short seconds. Time it. I'm serious. Now imagine, for those sixty seconds, that you have no food. Or that you have no shelter. Or that you have no ability to get medical care. Or that you have no way to stay warm in the winter or cool in the summer. Or that you're dying of AIDS. Or that you can't promise your children won't die in the next regime change. Close your eyes, count to 60, and think.

Whatever it was you thought about...you can change it. Or you can forget it forever. In the end though, you still have yourself and your troubles and your blessings and your friends and family and your bills and your job. And you always will.

To the hustlas, killers, murderers, drug dealers even the strippers / To the victims of Welfare for we living in hell here hell yeah / Now hear ye hear ye want to see Thee more clearly / I know he hear me when my feet get weary / Cuz we're the almost nearly extinct / We rappers are role models we rap we don't think