MONROVIA NEWS: Meeting for Possible Smoking Ban
HEALTH: Special Olympics Young Athletes Kicks Off Season
SPORTS: Should High School Football Be Banned?
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monroviaweekly.com
Thursday, January 14, 2016 - January 20, 2016
Your Voice, Your Community
Since 1996
COMPLIMENTARY COPY VOLUME 20, NO. 2
Celebrating a Dream and a Life of Nonviolence Martin Luther King Jr.’s Birthday Is Friday – Where Are We in Race Relations Today?
BY TERRY MILLER As we pause and reflect on the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (Jan.15, 1929) one cannot help but wonder how far, in fact, we have come in the United States. During the less than 13 years of Dr. King’s leadership of the modern American civil rights movement, from December 1955 until April 4, 1968 when he was assassinated, African-Americans achieved more genuine progress toward racial equality in America than the previous 350 years had produced. Dr. King is widely regarded as America’s pre-eminent advocate of nonviolence and one of the greatest nonviolent leaders in world history. But how does 1960s philosophy translate in today’s modern world? Well, that depends on many factors and how you feel about socialism. Despite his fear of backlash - calling for both racial integration and the explicit overturning of capitalism was bound to make him too threatening or fringe - socialism remained important to him, and by the end of his career, it was an open and
inextricable part of his dream for a better America. Drawing inspiration from both his Christian faith and the peaceful teachings of Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. King led a nonviolent movement in the late 1950s and ‘60s to achieve legal equality for African-Americans in the United States. While others were advocating for freedom by “any means necessary,” including violence, Dr. King used the power of words and acts of nonviolent resistance, such as protests, grassroots organizing, and civil disobedience to achieve seemingly-impossible goals. He went on to lead similar campaigns against poverty and international conflict, always maintaining fidelity to his principles that men and women everywhere, regardless of color or creed, are equal members of the human family. One of the seminal moments of the civil rights movement - and the one that made Dr. King a household name - was the 1963 March on Washington. Not everyone remembers that the march was “for jobs and freedom,” in that order. Among its demands were a national minimum wage and “a massive
federal program to train and place all unemployed workers - Negro and white - on meaningful and dignified jobs at decent wages.” After President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act, “King kept moving leftward, to confront the racial and economic injustice that had created and maintained the black ghettos of the north, and the national hubris that had led America into the quagmire of war in southeast Asia,” says Lee A. Daniels of the New Pittsburgh Courier. When he was killed, Dr. King had been planning to “stage a multiracial Poor Peoples March on Washington and involve himself in the bitter sanitation worker’s strike in Memphis,” Daniels adds. Those were hard years for Dr. King, his push for the working poor costing him the support of former allies, but they were “King’s finest hours,” Daniels says. In 1964, at 35 years old, SEE PAGE 7
- Courtesy Photo
Major Traffic Accident on Foothill Blvd. Sends Nine Patients to Hospital
BY TERRY MILLER AND SUSAN MOTANDER Investigations were underway following a multi-vehicle accident that occurred in 100 block of west Foothill Blvd. in Monrovia Wednesday. Preliminary investigations indicate that one of the five vehicles involved in the accident Wednesday afternoon ran a red light at Foothill and Myrtle according to Monrovia Watch Commander Patty Newton. Upon arrival, at approximately 12:50 Wednesday after- Chase Bank in Monrovia became the resting place for one vehicle involved in a 5-car collision that sent 9 to hospital Wednesday afternoon. noon, Monrovia Fire and Police - Photo by Terry Miller
also requested assistance from Pasadena and Arcadia to deal with the number of casualties, “walking wounded,” and the ensuing damage. The scene was somewhat surreal with steam coming out of vehicles engines, firefighters holding babies while paramedics treated the mothers and loaded up the numerous ambulances that were called in to transport the victims. Multiple Verdugo response is often called for in major incidents like this, but Monrovia SEE PAGE 18