Even before he became president of the Colorado Senate, Peter Groff has annually asked for a few moments on the Senate floor to talk about the legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Here are some highlights of his speech Monday.
While the dreamer may be gone, his vision did not die with him that day on the balcony; nor did the dream. Each generation since then has acted as the custodian of that dream — moving us from the mountaintop through the thicket and rugged terrain that is America’s rocky path toward freedom and equality to the reality of the Promised Land . . .
We can stand on the doorstep and steal a glimpse of the most diverse field of presidential candidates in the history of America. A Mormon winning in Wyoming, Nevada and Michigan; a woman winning in New Hampshire and Nevada and an African-American winning in Iowa and winning 11 of 17 counties in Nevada, including some of the most rural counties in the Silver State.
From that doorstep we can glimpse into the Promised Land and see another state in the West which recently elected its Senate’s lone African-American as only the third African-American president of a state Senate in the history of the United States.
I hope we . . . accept the role of generational custodian of the dream and actually be the generational custodian that finds the combination that unlocks the door and allows America to enter fully into the Promised Land.
We can now see what has become of the dream, we can see that it can be and actually is close to being realized for all Americans. Not just African-Americans or people of color or the poor, but for everyone.
But as we stand on the doorstep, understand that the combination to unlock the gate to the Promised Land is in all of us and each morning when I bang the gavel I hope that it awakens the dreamer in all of us. And in each day that we stand on the doorstep we find somehow and some way to discover the combination that will open the lock so that we can all march into the Promised Land together. Not as blacks or whites or Hispanics; or men or women or children; or as Christians or Jews, straight or gay, Democrats or Republicans, Conservatives or Liberals but as God’s children realizing a vision of a dreamer who wanted nothing more than America to fulfill her awesome potential in a land swept with equality and justice.
May God bless you, May God bless the dreamer and may God continue to bless the great state of Colorado.
Another point of view
Republican Sen. Shawn Mitchell of Broomfield took issue with some sentiments in two MLK Day tributes delivered on the Senate floor.
“We live in a system of freedom, free choice and free enterprise that results in some jobs paying more, some jobs paying less,” he said from the podium. “To equate those economic facts with racism, I believe, is intellectual, moral and political sleight of hand.”
