I’m not here to make things easier for you: I’m here to make things HARDER for you.
Why? Because I LOVE you. You are my people. And what I see, that you can’t YET see, is that there is no poverty worse than living without a sense of pride and dignity. And NOBODY can give that, and nobody can take it away. You have to GIVE it away. You have to surrender pride. You have to surrender dignity.
And I can’t stand watching it happen, day after day, year after year. We have so much to be proud of, but none of us have earned the respect our forebears earned We can’t swagger because our people suffered and survived indignities 150 years and more ago. We haven’t earned what they earned.
Pride is born in YOUR OWN sweat, no one else’s.
BECAUSE I love you, I am asking you to stop prostituting yourself to false messiahs, to empty promises, to deliverers who never arrive. Look in your own hearts: YOU are the heroes you’ve been waiting for.