As I continue to hone my public speaking skills, my speaker coach recently asked me a simple question: who do you consider the greatest orators? I rattled off a number of them, such as the obvious J.F. Kennedy, Winston Churchill and Martin Luther King. Then I realized my list comprised entirely of men. So, I had to do more digging.
It is painful to be called an anti-Semite by a deceased saint. Yet the dead speak, even when we wish they'd keep their thoughts to themselves. There is a tremendous effort to deny that Martin Luther King ever said these words: "When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You're talking anti-Semitism." Unfortunately, he did.
The essential difference between Occupy Wall Street and street protests a generation ago is that the latter were for human rights and peace, whereas the motive of the former is mainly economic. Given that history can repeat itself as farce and tragedy, here are some recollections of the high points of the American protests.