Malaysia's Finest Moment has come, let us make our dream become reality lets march with AMIBIKA'S Civil Societies and Selangorians

Public Rally - 23 Jan 2011

Civil Societies and Selangorians to hold public rally on 23Jan 2011 from 4pm to 7pm @ Kelana Jaya stadium to pressure Chief Secretary to declare Khusrin’s appointment null and void. Civil So...

WATCH KING’S HISTORIC SPEECH BELOW.

WATCH:

Martin Luther King Jr. – I Have a Dream

“Who, then, is greedy? — The one who does not remain content with self sufficiency. Who is the one who deprives others? The one who hoards what belongs to everyone. Are you not greedy? Are you not one who deprives others? You have received these things for stewardship, and have turned them into your own property! Is not the one who tears off what another is wearing called a clothes-robber? But the one who does not clothe the naked, when he was able to do so — what other name does he deserve? The bread that you hold on to belongs to the hungry; the cloak you keep locked in your storeroom belongs to the naked; the shoe that is moldering in your possession belongs to the person with no shoes; the silver that you have buried belongs to the person in need. You do an injury to as many people as you might have helped with all these things!”

The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martin Luther King Day memorials tend to celebrate King the Civil Rights leader, stressing his activism on behalf of interracial equality and reconciliation. We slight his emphasis on the link between racism and poverty and so neglect King the advocate of the poor. At the time of his assassination King was participating in the Memphis Sanitation Workers’ struggle to achieve a decent wage while simultaneously planning the Poor People’s Campaign. King’s sermons, speeches and writings echo ancient Christian teachings on poverty and wealth, which may still serve as a resource for the contemporary struggle to overcome economic inequality. He was a 20th century exemplar of a very old tradition.

Princeton Historian Peter Brown argues convincingly that “a revolution in the social imagination occurred between 300 and 600 C.E. closely associated with the rise to power of the Christian bishop. For the Christian bishop was held by contemporaries to owe his position in no small part to his role as the guardian of the poor. He was the ‘lover of the poor’ par excellence.” The 4th century bishops, St. Basil of Caesarea, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and St. Gregory of Nazianzus elucidated this novel virtue and its centrality to the community life of Christians. In 369 a severe drought followed by famine prompted Basil to preach a sermon on the parable of the rich fool (Luke 12:16-18), the man who decides to tear down his barns and build new ones to hold his surplus grain. “But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you; and the things you have prepared, whose will they be? So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.” Basil elaborates:

In his memorial speech last night in Tucson, President Obama reached a moment that no one could have expected and, perhaps, few appreciated. As the camera focused on the parents of young Christina Taylor Green and the president sought to comfort them, hesaid, "I want our democracy to be as good as she imagined it. All of us -- we should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children's expectations."

As one who has lost a daughter in her prime of life, I know how hopeless Christina's parents feel in their loss. There is little that anyone can say to fill the empty space so suddenly and violently created. The tokens of Christina's life still fill their home, but now they bring no comfort, only pain. And the traditional words of religious solace ring hollow, even for those with faith. It takes something immediate and transcendental to meet the needs of the moment.

What, after all, can bring some sense of meaning to Christina's violent death at the hand of a madman? Senseless killing, the fact of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, speaks to the randomness of fate and challenges our sense of order and justice. In grief, people often say, "She didn't deserve to die." It's an odd thing to say, as if our deserving was somehow supposed to protect us from harm, but in the moment it seems the only thing we can say to fill the void.

What President Obama offered in meeting the need of the moment was to give Christina's young life, with its growing sense of the country she imagined, a focal point for the whole country. Christina came that Saturday to meet her duly elected representative, to listen and to learn. Representative Giffords wasn't going to spread hatred or fear, wasn't going to harangue those who gathered there with the hot button issues of the day. She was there to listen and to respond, to find common ground and offer the help of her office. Christina would have learned much from that morning's event about how democracy is supposed to function.

What is the meaning of her life? What do we take away from this horror? President Obama's use of the word imagination in that moment was not the imagination of a fantasy, of an America free from fear and danger. The moment last night was the same as that moment when a woman in Philadelphia so long ago asked Franklin, "What have you given us, Mr Franklin?" He replied, "A republic, if you can keep it."

Many of us have lost faith in the America we were once proud to call our own. Perhaps Christina's America can give us renewal and a viable way forward

The Federal Constitution of 1957 guarantees all citizens of, first, Malaya and, later, Malaysia, the rights and liberties accorded to all free men of all democratic nations and provides for the establishment of institutions of state to secure and safeguard those liberties.

The existence and application of draconian laws in the context of a systemic failure on the part of many of those institutions to honour their duty to uphold, protect and preserve the Federal Constitution has resulted in those guaranteed rights and liberties becoming, for many, illusory.

Our Vision
The Malaysian  envisions a nation that has fully realised the aspirations of our founding fathers that Malaysia be a nation founded upon the principles of liberty and justice, her people bound together by a unity of purpose and imbibed with self-belief, to make Malaysia a land of prosperity and peace, ever seeking the welfare and happiness of its people and the maintenance of a just peace among all nations,.

Our Mission
believe that many Malaysians desire changes and reforms as comprehensively laid out in The  Civil Rights Voice and  Declaration.
 aims to take a leading role in realising these aspirations and encouraging the wider participation of civil society in shaping the future of our nation.