Dream Rebuilt
Our future depends on justice and sustainability
By Alia Hamdani
March 2025
The local Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration committee invited area students to write essays about King’s inspiration. This year’s $500 winner is Alia Hamdani from McClatchy High School.
Martin Luther King Jr. wrote the “Letter from Birmingham Jail” on April 16, 1963. He emphasized, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
Why has so little changed in the past 62 years, aside from desegregation? Burdens such as homelessness that create significant challenges that affect health care access, crime, safety, workforce stability and tax dollars are why.
Homelessness creates a chain reaction that influences various aspects of our economy, not just the individuals directly involved, clouding our once easily attainable white-picket-fence dream.
To form my vision for a better future, I would combat generational homelessness by building shelters and educating youth about the issue. By guiding the younger generation, we can prevent homelessness and rebuild the American dream.
King emphasized the fight for justice and equality in his “I Have a Dream” speech, stating, “We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so we’ve come to cash this check… that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.”
Empowering youth with knowledge allows us to address homelessness at its roots and help the lower class achieve the American dream as well as bring them “the riches of freedom.”
Similar to homelessness, overconsumption stems from a growing population. While the urge to consume is strong, we should strive to resist it as I believe we could have a better future without it. By encouraging donations of excess resources, we can create a future that promotes equity and helps lower classes pursue the “American dream.”
Don’t we want our kids and their future kids to enjoy green parks? Give people something to be united by, such as helping them achieve the same success you have. Then you have a future that is the true American dream: to live prosperously with no one to take away your right to live freely.
My vision for a more equitable future focuses on everyone’s well-being, as true progress requires unity. In “Zlata’s Diary,” Zlata Filipović highlights the power of people coming together against war. She writes, “People came out to be together, they don’t want war… I kept thinking about the march I joined today. It’s bigger and stronger than war. That’s why it will win. The people must be the ones to win, not the war, because war has nothing to do with humanity.”
We must address related challenges such as economic inequality, social justice and environmental sustainability. By uniting our efforts, we can create a brighter and more equitable future for everyone, because together we are bigger than the problems we make.
