¿DO YOU STILL HAVE A DREAM?

Have you looked into the MLK celebrations in your area? What will you be doing to mark this auspicious day?

¿IS KING'S DREAM STILL AN ILLUSION?

There are those that believe the more things change, the more they seem to stay the same. Four decades after civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, Black people are still facing many of the same issues as then. Low standards for education, high levels of unemployment, police brutality, and an “unjust war” overseas, all added with the ever increasing costs of living in the Big Apple, have many people feeling as if not much progress has been made since the turbulent ‘60s.

Throughout the many tribulations of his life, King spoke on a variety of topics ranging from physical freedom, to the deadly bombing of a church in Birmingham in which four young Black girls were killed, to the Vietnam War.

But in recent years, Dr. King’s vision has been relegated to just one grand speech - “I Have A Dream”. Rev. King addressed many social injustices that plagued Black communities across America, but the “Dream” dissertation is the one that continuously gets force-fed into the stream of public consciousness.

“As long as you keep the masses singing, clapping and dreaming, without taking action, you’re okay!” expressed street merchant Lajik 5 Allah. “When King spoke about economics in his ‘Beyond Vietnam’ speech, they killed him. We’re still being classified as second-class citizens in a land that we built. We have a human right to fight for self-determination, which is also what King was fighting for.”

Dr. King’s work reached beyond the segregated South where he was raised. On June 23rd 1963 in Detroit, Michigan, King addressed the audience: “Almost one hundred years ago…Abraham Lincoln signed

an executive order which was to take effect on January 1,1863. This executive order was called the Emancipation Proclamation and it served to free the Negro from the bondage of physical slavery. But one-hundred years later, the Negro in the United States of America isn’t free.”

He delivered his ’Beyond Vietnam’ lecture at Harlem’s Riverside Church on April 4,1967, exactly 365 days before he was mortally wounded in Memphis, Tennessee.

“Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in the time of war,” Rev. King emphatically stated. “There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I and others have been waging in America.”

He continued, “And I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic, destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.”

HRC TO HOLD MLK DAY OF SERVICE EVENTS ACROSS DIFFERENT US CITIES

Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the largest civil rights organization in the United States fighting for LGBT equality, will be holding the Martin Luther King, Jr (MLK) Day of Service across different cities in the country.

According to information published on its official website, MLK Day of Service events organised by HRC will be held in 23 cities across the country on 18 January 2016 (Monday), which includes cities such as Austin, New York, Los Angeles and San Diego.

HRC shares that through these MLK Day of Service events, it hopes to “transform Dr. King’s life and teachings into community action to help bring together people, strengthen communities and meet national challenges”.

HRC will also “work to ensure the safety and well-being of our LGBTQ youth” this year, it added.

MLK Day is an annual federal holiday in the United States to mark the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. It is observed on the third Monday of January each year, which is around King’s birthday on 15 January. King was a Baptist minister, activist, humanitarian and leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement who was assassinated on 4 April 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee. MLK Day was since observed annually since 1986, three years after then-President Ronald Reagan signed the holiday into the books of the law.

This year’s campaign will be largely centered upon LGBTQ homeless youth, who, according to HRC, stand at approximately 40 percent of the total homeless youth population.

“Consequences of homeless youth in the United States, particularly for LGBT youth, range from issues in mental and physical health, sexual abuse and exploitation, chemical and alcohol dependency, educational attainment, to social stigma, discrimination and family rejection,” it added.

HRC is in the midst of collecting supplies and assembling care bags for these homeless youth. On Monday, it is expected that hundreds of volunteers will be gathering to help in making a difference to the LGBTQ community.

More information on these MLK Day of Service events can be found here.

SOURCE: GAY STAR NEWS

HAPPY MARTIN LUTHER KING JR DAY

MAY HIS WORDS LIVE FOREVER IN YOUR HEARTS, MINDS & ACTIONS

MARTIN LUTHER KING JRs EXPANSIVE DREAM

It is not enough to talk about institutions and workplaces that fracture and separate people based on race, religion, gender, and sexual orientation. We must also look at the ways that we ourselves manifest these bigotries -- how we are the very ones who uphold and are part of these institutions and workplaces.

Often, we find that these institutions and workplaces are broken, dysfunctional, and wounded in the very same ways that we are. The structures we have created are mirrors not of who we want to be, but who we really are.

King would remind each of us that we cannot heal the world if we have not healed ourselves. So perhaps the greatest task, and the most difficult work we must do in light of King's teachings, is to heal ourselves. And this work must be done in relationship with our justice work in the world.

In A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway said that the world breaks us all, but some of us grow strong in those broken places. King's teachings invite us to grow strong in our broken places - not only to mend the sin-sick world in which we live, but also to mend the sin-sick world that we carry around within us. And we can only do that if we are willing to look both inward and outward, healing ourselves of the bigotry, biases, and demons that chip away at our efforts to work toward justice in this world.

Our differences have been used to divide us instead of unite us, so consequently we reside in a society where human brokenness, isolation, and betrayal are played out every day.

I know that the struggle against racism that King talked about is only legitimate if I am also fighting anti-Semitism, homophobia, sexism, classism - not only out in the world but also in myself. Otherwise, I am creating an ongoing cycle of abuse that goes on unexamined and unaccounted for.

We are foolish if we think we can heal the world and not ourselves. And we delude ourselves if we think that King was only talking about the woundedness of institutional racism, and not the personal wounds we all carry as human beings.

Ironically, our culture of woundedness and victimization has bonded us together in brokenness. The sharing of worlds to depict and honor our pain has created a new language of intimacy, a bonding ritual that allows us to talk across and among our pains. In exploring our common wounds, we sometimes feel more able to find the trust and the understanding that eludes us as "healthy" people.

When we bond in these unhealthy ways we miss opportunities in ourselves for moral leadership, and to work collaboratively with others to effect change in seemingly small ways that eventually lead to big outcomes.

Both Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. were leaders in the Montgomery bus boycott that challenged Alabama's Jim Crow laws. Both were working together for a desired outcome, and they could not have done it without the other.

Had Rosa Parks not sat down on the bus and refused her seat to a white man that day in December 1955, King could not have gotten up to promulgate a social gospel, which catapulted the civil rights movement.

Each year, I mark the Martin Luther King holiday by reexamining myself in light of King's teachings. And in so doing, I try to uncover not only the ways in which the world breaks me, but also how it breaks other people. These breaks keep us fractured instead of united toward a common goal - a multicultural democracy.

I believe that when we use our gifts in the service of others as King has taught us, we then shift the paradigm of personal brokenness to personal healing. We also shift the paradigm of looking for moral leadership from outside of ourselves to within ourselves, thus realizing that we are not only the agents of change in society, but also the moral leaders we have been looking for.

Our job, therefore, in keeping King's dream alive is to remember that our longing for social justice is also inextricably tied to our longing for personal healing.

SOURCE: THE BILERICO PROJECT

MLK DAY

Today is the official national holiday to celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr.  MLK was such a powerful and important figure that certain parts of his legacy have become cliché.  The most minimal of acknowledgments of Black History Month include his “I Have a Dream” speech.  But, hopefully you already know that MLK was more than that speech.

He was a man who had flaws, dreams, desires, ambitions, a sense of humor and a plan. The day that is designated to honor him is typically filled with lectures, volunteer opportunities and days off from school and work. Since MLK was such a proponent of education and activism, spending the day other than sleeping in seems appropriate. Do something for his special day that embodies the spirit of positive change through action.

Have you looked into the MLK celebrations in your area? What will you be doing to mark this auspicious day?

¿HOW ARE YOU ADVANCING THE DREAM?

Fifty years ago this summer, Dr. King lead the March on Washington, where he gave his famous "I have a dream..." speech. 

Today, it's everyday Americans that are working to help advance the dream. How are you ADVANCING THE DREAM?