PLATFORM : Message to Mandela

(If I could speak with Mandela), I’d like to express the gratitude that young people feel throughout Los Angeles, from what I’ve seen over the past three years working with the Student Coalition--just the almost universal support among young people for the struggle in South Africa. And I’d also like to discuss with him the relationship of how apartheid works in South Africa and how the not-so-blatant apartheid of our inner cities works, and stress the unity between Americans and South Africans to end everybody’s oppression. He’s been in prison for (27 years) years, and now is released, and is on the verge of seeing everything he’s worked for, for his entire life, come around to this one moment. We, as students, never thought we would see this day.

The destruction of people like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King has led to the fact that we’ve had to almost turn outside our own country to find somebody who is an inspiration.