Hate is the sound of the approaching Gestapo's boots and the echoes of screams of thousands of Jews. Hate is the slave drivers and the Middle Passage. It's the clutching of your purse as a black man passes. It's the tears of Japanese mothers after the nuclear bomb came through. Hate is the greed of Saddam and the sandstorms in Iraq.
Hate is the gangs in the streets and the guns that they pack.
Hate is not an illusion, for hate lives right across the lake in seclusion. Hate is in the air that we breathe, in the churches in which we pray, the songs that we sing, and the words that we say. Hate was born in the hearts of the old ones And survives in the minds of the young ones. Hate is defeated by mothers who read to their children at night and the many who were killed fighting for civil rights. Hate is defeated by people like Ghandi and Mother Theresa, who gave and expected nothing in return.