On this day we celebrate the great distance we have
come in this country and yet there is a great distance to go. We are
only half way to our goal while others in this country are without
purpose, dignity and decency of work. A country where people feel
powerless to change their place or to make a better one for their
children. This is the breaking of spirit denying them the chance to
stand as fathers and mothers among other men and women in our
country.

What this country needs now is a new hope...a renewed
faith in work. Jobs with dignity, self reliance and integrity of
family. When the rights of one are denied all are endangered. Our
commitment now must lie in our decision to be stronger than our
condition. In understanding what unites us, rather than what
separates us from one another.
Albert Camus once wrote that truth
needs witnesses and testimony. This will come with slow deliberation
of time and a temperance of spirit. The struggles of the past are
still with us today. They define the reasons why we are gathered
here. We cannot forget the profound effects the condition of an
individual has on the will of the community. The community itself is
not the greatest asset, but rather its individuals are. The greatest
challenge we now face is the violence of institution indifference,
inaction and slow decay. The salvation of our community and programs
lie in terms of each individual. Responsibility is the price we must
all pay for freedom.

Too often much energy has been spent on finding freedom from
responsibility. It is now time to spend those energies on being
responsible to gain freedom. If we insist on being free from the
burdens of life we will cease to be free at all. Our journey will
begin when we can admit the vanities of our false distinctions among
each other, and learning to find advancement in the search for the
advancement of others. In the past, institutions which affect the
poor have planned programs for the poor not with them.

Robert Kennedy once wrote:

Part of the sense of helplessness and futility
comes from the feeling of powerlessness to effect the operation
of these institutions. The CAPs [Community Action Programs] must
basically change these organizations by building into the
program real representation for the poor...giving them a real
voice in their institutions.1

Perhaps we will not prevent this from being a world where human
tragedy exists, but in the least come to understand our own power to
effect the amount of human suffering. The journey lies not before
us, but within us. If we fail to seek control of a disciplined
community spirit, our efforts may end enslaved by our own inactions.
We must always make our efforts to understand, to comprehend and
replace violence with compassion and love, helping others to return
to a more human time and place in their lives, where the promises of
these programs are at last fulfilled for all.

Here on this day, let us acknowledge the full human equality of all
people in this nation before God, institution and government.
Finally, let us "dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks taught so
many years ago, to tame the savages of man and make gentle the life
of this world."

1 U.S. House of Representatives.1964. Economic
Opportunity Act of 1964. Hearings Before the Subcommittee on the War on Poverty
Program of the Committee on Education and Labor, 88th Congress, 2nd Session, on
H.R. 10440, 17 March 1064.