So That Man May Be Free

by Michael Ewetuga

There are many people in the world and despite governments’ efforts all over the world to count their citizens and residents, personally, I think it is futile. Counting is good for planning purposes and that’s about it because there is no way the exact figure can be arrived at.

When you look at all the people in the world then you start to appreciate those who left their feet on the sand of time, people who did things that is worth remembering them for, the heroes, the champions of the poor and the helpless, those leaders who really had the wellbeing of their people at heart.

There are the other people in the opposite side, people who hate, people who preached injustice and perpetrated it, people whom the plight of the poor is entertainment and to whom their cry of helplessness is music. People who preached segregation and supremacies, arch angel of the devil, the heartless, the rogues, the unimaginative, the tormentors of the human souls, the devil walking around fooling themselves in their stupidity that they are superior.

The good news is while we scratch our heads to remember some of these monsters the names of the good people come to our tongue effortlessly and naturally. The bad people are perhaps necessary to show us the strength and the power of the personalities of the good people, just like darkness helps us to appreciate the light.

When I think about these heroes, they give me hope and they assure me that even if I can’t be like them at least I can appreciate what being good means, I can appreciate the strength of their characters and I can thank them for making me walk with my head held high knowing that I am human and I have dignity and no one should have the power, no matter their positions, to strip me of that dignity.

I am happy because they showed me that I am alive, that I am a special being that God in his plans took time to think about and I know that he thought about me because I am here, breathing and feeling, tasting and smelling, my senses are alive. I am happy that they showed me that the wicked one is after all just human, he is not God and he cannot be God because when all is said and done the words of the bible shall come to past we are made from dust and to it we shall return.

The wicked ones die too and they lay helpless and if you carry their hands they will fall right back down, they are subject to the laws of gravity and if I was a church “goer” at this minute I will shout “HALLELUJAH”. May God punish any man, who because he is in position, uses his position to subject human beings, made by God, to inhuman conditions.

I have seen the mountain top too and I might not get there but when I visited the mountain top I saw that the last laugh belongs to the masses of this world and that the memories of the wicked ones and their offspring will be subjected to much scorn and curses. If there’s indeed a hell fire some people committed enough atrocities for one to wish them to burn forever.

I read and I marveled and I appreciated the fact that some people stood face to face with death and demanded justice, that word that has no meaning to some dumb people who do not appreciate the differences in others. If God or nature or whoever in your believe created us wanted us to be the same he wouldn’t have created us different.

Senseless men, intolerant and fearful of differences, killing and maiming because they do not understand that there’s strength in diversity, God bless that philosopher who said no man is so foolish as to be completely useless. It takes a man of reason and a man of honor and a man of respect to see wisdom in what ordinarily appears foolish and to give honor even when people felt it was not deserved and to show respect even to people that are regarded as being beneath him because none is. The power to reason is a privilege God gave to people it is not something that is to be used to ridicule others or to point out their inadequacies.

Some people will suffer injustice so that they will not be killed, they wait for the injustice to go away instead of facing it but not these heroes to them their lives were nothing, justice, to them, is everything. Like Peter Tosh said, “everyone is crying out for peace, none is crying out for justice, I don’t want no peace, I need equal right and justice”. He was not foolish for saying he didn’t want peace, he knew that where there’s equal rights and justice there will be peace.

Maybe you don’t want to die, maybe you feel like that is better than equal rights and justice, you are dead anyway. You are dead when you cannot be a dad to your children, you are dead when you cannot put food on their table and you are definitely dead when you allow anyone to treat you like a nonentity.

Heroes are humans, they have their faults too and sometimes they realize that before their death like Malcolm X, Malcolm Little, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz or whatever you want to call him did for he said before his death “I have met blonde-haired, blued-eyed men I could call my brothers.” He realized that men, regardless of color, nationality or creed are the same, a spiritual reawakening, and a fundamental realization.

Malcolm, a man, who like his father, was not afraid to fight so that his people can be free, a man who did not hide the iniquity of his own leader, holding his allegiance to his God, his people and his conscience. A man who in the face of death stood for the truth, a man who paid the ultimate price leaving behind his children his responsibilities and instead shoulder the responsibilities of those he did not know but to whom he felt like one with because he felt their pains, because he heard their cries and because like them he was crying too and when tears of water was not enough to take away the injustice he shed the ultimate tears, the tears of blood. He did not shed his blood to atone for our sins; he shed his blood so that we may walk on it free. For doing that I say thank you Malcolm and I also want to say that despite the fact that every man has a right to decide his own destiny he chose to align his own with that word that every man cry for in the face of injustice FREEDOM.

Today people are governors, senators and aspiring to be president because a man, together with like minded people, stood up in the midst of adversity and said NO to injustice and discrimination.

In our hearts and in the hearts of our children, you will live till the world go down and those who killed you will be forgotten like a bad tooth ache.

Michael@ewetuga.com
www.ewetuga.com
www.minoritiesinterests.com

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