In this stirring speech, Julian Bond takes on issues of poverty and economic equality and argues that the same forces that tried to derail the civil rights movement in the 1960's are still in place today. Scathing in his criticism of the current administration for supporting tax cuts for the wealthy, while cutting programs designed to help the disenfranchised, he also takes on the Democratic party for being "absent without leave from this battle for America's soul." He also provides insight into Martin Luther King's views on affirmative action, and gives his own views on the University of Michigan case that is before the Supreme Court.