To allow injustice and inequality invites a Ferguson to your

Hear, O seeker of wisdom, the words of the elder, the voice of Jesse Jackson, who once proclaimed: “To allow injustice and inequality invites a Ferguson to your community. We must stand together, black, white, brown, red, and yellow and fight for justice and equality for all. It's the only way to avoid more Fergusons.” These words are not born of idle thought, but from the furnace of suffering and the bitter cry of the oppressed. They ring as both a warning and a summons, calling every soul to the battle against injustice and inequality, lest the flames that consumed one city spread to all.

The meaning is plain, yet deep: when a people close their eyes to cruelty, when they permit their neighbors to be crushed beneath the weight of oppression, they themselves are planting the seeds of unrest. For silence in the face of evil is not peace, but complicity. And where injustice grows, the earth trembles, and the oppressed rise, and the land is shaken with sorrow and fire. Thus was it in Ferguson, Missouri, when the cry of a slain youth echoed against the deafness of authority, and streets were filled with both grief and anger.

Let the generations remember that moment. The death of Michael Brown was not an isolated wound; it was the breaking of a dam long strained by centuries of inequality. The protests, the flames, the outcry—these were not sudden storms, but the harvest of neglect. The ancient prophets told us: “Justice, justice shall you pursue.” Yet when that command is ignored, the people themselves will demand it, even in anguish, even in tumult.

But the words of Jackson do not end in despair. They lift their gaze higher, toward unity. For he names the colors of humanity—black, white, brown, red, and yellow—not to divide, but to remind us that the fate of one is bound to the fate of all. Just as the limbs of a body cannot say to one another, “I have no need of you,” so no race or people can say they stand apart. To allow harm to another is to invite harm to oneself. To allow the chains on one is to forge chains for all.

Recall, then, the story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who marched not only for his own people, but for the very soul of America. When he walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, he was met with hatred, but behind him walked men and women of every hue, joined together. Their courage gave birth to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, proof that when the people unite, the fortress of injustice cannot endure. Such unity is the shield against “more Fergusons.”

O children of the future, let this be your lesson: Injustice tolerated is injustice multiplied. Inequality ignored is inequality unleashed. The way of wisdom is not silence but solidarity, not apathy but action. To preserve peace, one must labor for justice. To build harmony, one must defend equality. For peace without justice is but the stillness before the storm.

And what shall you do? Begin where you stand. Speak when you see wrong. Raise your hand when another is struck down. In your community, seek to know the stranger, to lift the poor, to guard the weak. Teach your children not only to dream of freedom, but to act for it. Support leaders who cherish equality, and hold accountable those who profit from division. Let not fear silence you, nor comfort blind you.

Thus, take to heart the wisdom in Jackson’s words. For only when the people stand together—in courage, in compassion, in unbreakable unity—shall the shadow of injustice recede. Only then shall the land be healed, and only then shall no more Fergusons arise. This is the teaching; carry it as a flame, lest darkness return.