Yes We Can Speech

Brooklyn Prep Carl Parker
Ms. Roth – U in the Media April 14, 2008
Yes We Can

For starters I’m not here to blow you over with gratuitous use of large words or flagrant speech and voice fluctuations to catch your attention. In fact, this speech may not be eloquent at all. Instead, I sacrifice those things for the blunt truth. The truth is hope is fading. Gaps are growing; between the morals of two generations, between the pockets of the richest of the rich and the poorest of the poor, between what is expected and should happen and what is actually occurring and worst of all, between us Americans who once shared the same idealistic dream.
The degree of separation is so bad that no longer can I personally share ideas and beliefs with my colleagues without criticism. Our world is separating. What began with twelve disciples led by one man has turned into thousands of branches of Christianity and millions of different ideas and interpretations of one book. What began with one movement of an ethnic group for equal rights has split into a spectrum of beliefs from “non-violent” to “by any means necessary”. What began with 13 colonies that unified under the belief of freedom has turned into a corrupt form of government that’s centered more around money then its original ideas of “liberty and justice for all”.
My list can go on until you realize that all I am saying is monotony. Now is the time for change, not because I am idealistic of the future, but because I feel it’s now or never. American culture is so immersed in stereotypes, violence, sex and drugs that the once ever-blazing flame of hope has now calmed down to a silent flicker. Well I believe now is a time to stop this silence and speak before the flame goes out. Within Carl Parker lies the blood of a Panamanian-American and an African American. Among them are many shades, forms and sizes of people but all under the same suffix…American. So lets rise, not as an individual group or race, but more so as Americans. Lets unite ourselves under one composition of morals and beliefs. Lets put an end to separation and start a new, fresh beginning entitled “The American People” not “The African American” or “Latino-American People”.
As long as there is the small flicker of light, that dim shade of orange, that minute source of heat that we call the flame of hope, I can say…Yes We Can.