Carroll: How can we celebrate this holiday in all honesty

By Chris Barge, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published January 22, 2008 at 12:30 a.m.

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Rep. Terrance Carroll set aside his prepared remarks and spoke from the heart Monday as he and the House commemorated the father of the civil rights movement.

The black Denver Democrat said he didn't want speak, as he has in the past, about how far society has come.

"From the war in Iraq; to the fact that in this state more than 60 percent of our students of color do not graduate from high school within four years; from the fact that in a state where only 4 percent of the total population is African-American yet 25 percent of our prison population consists of African-American men and African-American women, it seemed to be improper and inappropriate at this time to stand before you and say that Dr. King's dream has meant a great deal to all of us," he said.

Carroll said he read about a young black woman displaced by Hurricane Katrina who said she doesn't dream anymore.

"How can we celebrate this holiday in all honesty, and march and get up and shout and sing songs when the truth of the matter is, this woman is not alone," he said. "There are far too many people in this country who don't dream anymore. They don't have hopes. They don't have aspirations. They just find despair, they just find apathy, and they just find hatred."

With the U.S. spending $3 billion a week in Iraq, everything in this country is not "just hunky-dory," he said.

"I think that as we celebrate this holiday, on this day, we have more a moral obligation to search our souls, to ask ourselves, like the writer of the Book of Micah, in Chapter 6:8, when he asks the rhetorical question: What does the Lord require of us? To do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with the Lord our God."

bargec@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5059

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