Reflections from Lenny

You Must Make a Difference
Human Rights Forum
May 1, 1992

I'd like you all to rise, please. I'd like you to be silent for the next 81 seconds, because it was in 81 seconds that Rodney King was beaten on March 3, 1991. Now, that should be your last silent protest of what happens when people are victimized by hate.

When the government is the perpetrator of a hate crime, whether it be renegade cops or a judicial system that ignores what we saw with our own eyes, the message that should go out to you is not to lose faith but to start to take responsibility, as you have today by being here. You must take responsibility to make sure that Rodney King and all the Rodney Kings will never be alone -- be they black or white, Jewish or Christian, whether or not they have a video camera capturing their pain and their anguish when they are singled out, whether or not they have witnesses, whether or not they have national television covering them. For all those people in all the decades of this country's history -- for all the people who don't have someone to speak up for them; for all the young people who are stopped on the streets for no reason but the color of their skin; for all the young people who can't walk into a department store in the city of Boston without being trailed by store detectives because of the color of their skin; for all the people who work hard, who study hard, who try to succeed, who graduate high school, who graduate college, become doctors and lawyers, and still, no matter how wealthy, how educated, how hard they work, how much they stand up for other people, are still singled out because of their religion or their race or their sex -- for all these people, we should not be part of the silent protest. We have to be part of a responsible protest.

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More reflections from Lenny
Taking Your Life Back
Defeating the Ambush of Hate
No Justification for Silence

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