speech

Thanks to my friend (and fire-breathing progressive blogger) Pam Spaulding for posting 'Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. - those other speeches' to remind readers about King's unequivocal message about the injustice of war in his time.

Many of us peace activists are familiar with "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence," delivered April 4, 1967, at the Riverside Church in Harlem. But I wasn't aware of "Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam," a sermon at the Ebenezer Baptist Church on April 30, 1967.

Read on to listen and read from these speeches.

Following is the text of my speech delivered on October 27, 2007 at the national anti-war mobilization in New York City organized by United for Peace and Justice.

I am an Iranian-American who loves both Iran and America.

I am Iranian enough to be worried for my people, their cultural heritage, their history, and above all the path towards democracy that they have taken for the past 100 years. I see that today they are closer than ever to reaching this dream: the Iranian women, students, workers, and other groups have worked hard to get here and are willing to even work harder to achieve this dream.

What I feel my fellow Iranians are saying now, and they hope that everyone hears them, is that they are intelligent enough to make their own decisions. I hear their cry, loud and clear, when they say, “Please do not destroy our dream that we have worked so hard for.” I hear them say, loud and clear, “Please let us determine our own future by ourselves.”