ESSAY

ZMAG: When The Saints Go Marching Out by Arundhati Roy

August 28, 1963 ... forty years later, Martin Luther King Jr.'s words remembered: "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: `We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal....'"

THIS is the 40th anniversary of the March on Washington, when Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous "I have a dream" speech. Perhaps it's time to reflect - again - on what has become of that dream.

It's interesting how icons, when their time has passed, are commodified and appropriated (some voluntarily, others involuntarily) to promote the prejudice, bigotry and inequity they battled against. But then in an age when everything's up for sale, why not icons? In an era when all of humanity, when every creature on God's earth, is trapped between the International Monetary Fund (IMF) cheque book and the American cruise missile, can icons stage a getaway?

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