Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be coworkers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood.
— Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter From a Birmingham Jail“
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Progress is never inevitable.
But now is the time, and this is the place, and we are the people.
We may none of us get all the way to the promised land — at least not in this life. We might not even get to the mountaintop, or be granted a look over.
But we can always take another step, lift another voice, make more real the promise of democracy.
Let us march on.
Colin Steele 