Free At Last (Words By Dr Martin Luther King Jr)

By Iggy Weapons
Music available to download at: https://akasha5.bandcamp.com/track/free-at-last

From the speech "Why I Am Opposed To The War In Vietnam" 1967

We'll sing it as we're getting ready to sing it now,
Something is happening and people are not going to be silenced,
The truth must be told,
It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor,
And I watched the program broken,
As if it were some idle political plaything,
Of a society gone mad on war,

I knew America would never invest the necessary funds or energies,
In rehabilitation of it's poor,

You may not know it my friends,
But it is estimated that we spend $500,00 to kill each enemy soldier,
While we spend only $53 for each person classified as poor,
And much of that $53 goes for salaries to people who are not poor,

So I was increasingly compelled to the war as an enemy of the poor,
And attack it such,

The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today...
My own Government,

This is the road our nation has taken,
The road of those who make peaceful resolutions impossible,
By refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures,
That come from the immense profits of overseas investment,
We must rapidly begin to shift from a thing orientated society,
To a person orientated society,
When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people,

The giant triplets of racism, militarism and economic exploitation are incapable of being conquered,

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth with righteous indignation,

The Western arrogance of feeling it has everything to teach others with nothing to learn from them is not just,
A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war.....
This way of settling differences is not just,

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defence,
Than programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death,
And I haven't lost faith,
I am not in despair,
I haven't lost faith,
Because the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice,
With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when justice will roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream,
With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when the lion and the lamb will lie down together,
And every man will sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid,

We'll sing it as we're getting ready to sing it now,
Free at last,
Free at last,
Thanks God almighty we are free at last,

And nations will not rise up against nations,
Neither shall they study war anymore.