January 25, 2017
St. Louis honors Dr. King
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Community Voices By Dr. Charles J. Pearson. P.2 A variety of performances and speeches calling for greater social justice in the region took place in St. Louis’ historic Old Courthouse on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Photo by Nicholas Elmes
City, county mark MLK Day with calls to justice and action
Learn & Play
By Nicholas Elmes Organizations throughout the St. Louis region honored the memory and ideas of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. last week with calls for action in the community and events aimed at improving social justice. The largest celebration, heralded as the second largest in the country, kicked off with over an hour of rousing speeches and performances at the historic old courthouse in downtown St. Louis before participants marched through the city streets. Leaders from throughout the region warned that events from the past couple of years proved that Dr. King’s dream had not yet been achieved and encouraged those in attendance to fight against racism and injustice in a non-violent manner. “When I think about Dr. King’s dream of equality I have to ask: is that dream realized or is it a dream deferred?” said City License Collector Mavis Thompson. “Despite our progress, we find ourselves being revisited by the ghosts of the past. Old battles against racism, indifference and injustice are still being waged.” Thompson said the region must also do more to address homelessness and provide for those less fortunate. “The struggle is not just black,” she said. “The struggle is for equality. Let’s go out and fight injustice together and in love.” City Comptroller Darleen Green said that fight or justice also revolved around how funding was spent in the region. “I cannot subsidize a stadium, I cannot subsidize a hotel, I cannot subsidize an office tower before I consider our young people,” she said. “When we subsidize we are short
changing our young people in the classroom. We could have better teachers and pay them better salaries. We could improve facilities at the schools. We could improve police training. We cannot gamble our young people’s future. We must recognize our young people need our help and our hope. “We must face our challenges head on,” she added, joining other speakers in saying that growing gun violence in the metro area was one of those biggest challenges. “In 2015 we had 188 murders and in 2016 we did not do any better.” “Go back into your communities and tell your cousins, your brothers, and your uncles that we must keep the dream alive by not taking a life,” said St. Louis NAACP President Albert Manson, Sr. “Tell them to put the gun down. It is bad when your grandmother cannot safely operate her vehicle in the street without fear of them being taken from her because of some knucklehead with a gun.” Khatib Waheed, a national presenter, facilitator and education consultant, provided a list of concerns that stemmed from racism and poverty in the area. “In St. Louis, we are still ranked in the top 10 of the most racially segregated cities and regions in the country,” he said, noting the variety of disparities between those living north of Delmar Boulevard and those living in the southern part of the city. But Waheed said that with every concern he also saw opportunities to address inequality, racism, and issues of poverty. In the county, two churches in disparate neighborhoods worked together on Martin Luther King Day to facilitate discussion
across the county about just those issues. “Typically Martin Luther King Day is a day when are off from work, but for the past several years at Wellspring Chruch we have been trying to make Martin Luther King Day a day to be on,” said Nickie Reinhart-Swierk, the coordinator of Institutional Readiness at the Center of Social Empowerment – a nonprofit which arose from Wellspring Church’s involvement in the the Ferguson protests. “Martin Luther King Day is a day about justice in our communities and we have been encouraging people to not use the day to sleep in, but instead to go out and improve the world.” She said in previous years the church has spearheaded community volunteering on the day. “That was all good and important work, but we kind of realized that that was not the work that changes the world,” said ReinhartSwierk. “We wanted to do more and really infuse justice into the day.” So this year the church partnered with The Gathering in Clayton, and The Walker Leadership Institute at Eden Theological Seminary to create a day of learning and engagement centered on conversations to generate positive social engagement. “We started with two different workshops in the morning,” said Reinhart-Swierk. “Our artist in residence David Winningham led a workshop on art and justice where he had participants do pinch pots where every different quality of the pot, the color, texture, shape, represented one part of your identity. So the color of the pot represented your racial See ‘DR. KING’ page 2
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