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June 10, 2004

Archbishop Desmond Tutu Speech at the Dedication of the Freedom Center, June 10, 2004 at the World Financial Center, New York City

Good afternoon. I am a pastor. They have said I should be brief. Have you ever met a brief pastor?

Governor Pataki, Mayor Bloomberg, distinguished ladies and gentlemen:

The world still shudders with horror when it looks back on what happened here on September the eleventh and still feels a deep sympathy for those who were injured here and those who died here as well as for their loved ones.

The Freedom Center will symbolize the indomitable spirit of the people of this land, the indomitable spirit of people of other lands, of the people of this city who may have been down, but most certainly not out. It will be a testimony to their resilience as they rise like the proverbial phoenix from the ashes. There is a renewed resolve to make the world safer for freedom and to eradicate those conditions that can make people so desperate that they are driven to commit dastardly acts of desperation. What Martin Luther King, Jr., said about injustice applies to poverty; and abject poverty anywhere poses a threat to affluence everywhere.

It is apt, so apt, so fitting that this designation of the Freedom Center should occur in the week when we commemorate D-Day-when the Allies launched the drive that ultimately defeated Adolf Hitler and the awfulness that was Nazism. We showed then attributes that we have sometimes forgotten. But it is when we are united as the free world was united then, that we can and will-as happened then-we can and will defeat the enemies of freedom, of goodness, of justice, of compassion, of caring. We realized then, and we need to realize now, that we are bound together by a common humanity, by a common vulnerability, bound together by our common passion for freedom that we can't go it alone, that we are bound up in the bundle of life. We used to say to our white compatriots in South Africa: "you will never be free until we blacks are free, for freedom is indivisible."

As we stand here, looking to the future of the Freedom Center, we feel how the record of the glorious quest for freedom of the Pilgrim fathers and mothers; of those who were escaping persecution and destitution in Europe; the quest of freedom of such as a Nelson Mandela, of an Aung San Suu Kyi, of a Mahatma Gandhi, of a Martin Luther King, Jr., and many, many others of this and other lands-let us all dedicate ourselves, inspired by the splendid examples that have gone before, dedicate ourselves anew to a common commitment to strive for freedom for all. For we can ultimately be free only together. We can be human only together. We can be prosperous only together. We can be safe and secure only together.

Thank you.

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