Tuesday, January 18, 2011

The Unrealized Dreams of Martin Luther King

Yesterday I attended the 20th ceremony celebrating the life and dreams of Martin Luther King Jr. held by citizens of Bellingham, Washington.  It was sweet and inspirational. There was not an outside guest speaker this year.  Instead key servants of this community - members of the Lummi nation, the Mayor, and ex-Mayor, a middle school teacher, a  city council member, President of the Peace and Justice Center, and an author - spoke with humility and gratitude for the leadership of  this amazing American! I must also mention a 40+ volunteer chorus who sang with all their hearts lovely. spirited music.  There was a call for other citizens and young leadership to step forward and help keep this tradition alive. Distributed at the event was a copy of highlights from King's less familiar Riverside Church speech against the Vietnam War and about "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today - my own government...If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read: Vietnam." Let me add Iraq and Afghanistan,  This is a major aspect of unfinished business we must attend to.  We are teaching violence to our children with TV programs, inter-net games, vitriolic rhetoric, availability of guns and in our families with ugly divorces. We have unfinished business to attend to -let's get busy! I'll have more to say tomorrow about where I feel we can start to make "the change".

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

So true Gramma!

Dudley Evenson said...

The Bellingham celebration of Martin Luther King is one of my favorite holidays, bringing our wonderful community together to remember and inspire to make the dream come alive.