On this first full day of spring I hear voices for respect and human dignity ring out. I heard on radio today a reporter in Libya talking about how he hears the same cries to be treated with human dignity and respect on the streets there as he heard other Middle East countries.

It is the same cry I heard on the streets around the Capitol in Madison when over 100, 000 of us gathered a week ago last Saturday.

Watching tonight a National Geographic documentary, “Hard Times” on prison life in an Ohio state prison I heard a man say that all he had left was his human dignity and he would do anything, fighting or hustling, to keep it and have it be respected.

Recently I have been kidding around with a friend about his membership in the ‘reject’ club I am making up. He has a serious illness yet thinks he has to work, a regular job for pay, to be a real man. I tell him that is what is holding him back for full membership in the ‘reject’ club.

We all seek human dignity but unless we can find it in ourselves we will always be disappointed. Being a ‘reject’, ‘outcast’ or marginalized is not easy at all. I probably should say that I am a ‘want to be reject’.

Talking about human dignity reminds me of the last civil rights marches of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It was in Memphis and it was with the garbage workers of the city who were being treated without human dignity. The signs they marched with said “I am a Man”.

The last year of Dr. King’s life, after his speech ‘breaking the silence’ about the war in Vietnam was spent with him being treated by many in power as an outcast and a reject. It is only fitting that he was killed supporting garbage collectors who were seeking human dignity.

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