Another Call to Be Maladjusted -

[Advocates AAA]

Another Call to Be Maladjusted -

Throughout the course of human history, time and time again, civilizations have enacted laws and sanctioned social policies that have exploited and oppressed men, women, and children for their inalienable rights. They have been tortured with the tactics of disenfranchisement, sentenced to a life of invisibility, confused their dreams, and neutralized their talents. Yet, time and time again, it was not until the hearts, minds, and hands of the people unified that the power was generated to shine a bright light upon the social inequities, that the hearts and minds of those being oppressed were cradled within the arms of hope. Hope that the feet of the exploited were placed upon the paths of progress.
In 1959, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., summoned the power of unity when he called upon the people of the nation to never adjust themselves to the injustices that were plaguing his era. He called upon the people to be maladjusted to the segregation and discrimination during this time. His request was to be maladjusted to mob rules and to the tragic effects of the methods of physical violence. He wanted them to be so maladjusted that they would be enamored to go out and change their world and their civilization, of which, they did with great dignity and determination.
Now, the year 2011, presents us with new injustices that we must not ever adjust ourselves to. Today, I call upon the nation, the people, to be maladjusted to the extremely harsh and retributive approach the U.S. judicial system. We have to be maladjusted to the practice of sentencing our youth to extreme years of incarceration, including life without the possibility of parole. As well as being maladjusted to the widespread practice of placing our children in adult maximum security prisons where physical and emotional exploitation certainly awaits them. To be maladjusted to the idea that the harm caused to one of our children is not a threat to the value and worth of the children.
Let us be so maladjusted to these children destroying laws and sanctioned polices, that we are enamored to go out and not only change out world, but to our civilization. This would save their lives and preserve the talents of an increasingly number our America's youth. In that, it will place the bricks of justice back into the structured foundation of our country.