MLK Day Event Keynote
This past Martin Luther King Day, I was invited to give the keynote speech for Redondo Beach’s 3rd Annual MLK Celebration. Below is that speech.
I want to thank the organizers for inviting me to speak today. It truly is an honor. In all honesty, I have to admit that I was initially hesitant to accept. I asked… why me? Would it not be better to have a member of our African American community speak on this day? And I was pointedly challenged. Was I not an ally? Did I not advocate for the things I believed? If so… then I had a perspective worth sharing.
I appreciated that poke in the chest… or maybe it was a shove. It reminded me of a memory from just a handful of years ago when I went to see Senator Sanders speak at an event focused around criminal justice reform. While he was the “headliner,” there were a host of other speakers preceding him. They were strong, powerful and honest. Their messages were sobering and moving. I left the event feeling deflated and came home to my wife saying, “I feel like I am not doing enough.”
It makes me think about some excerpts from Dr. King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”
I’ll paraphrase a bit – but he said that he “was gravely disappointed in the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice, as opposed to the extremists.” He further said, “Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.”
If I was an ally in this cause… why wasn’t I actively doing more?
Katie Reittko wrote “You don’t get to decide you’re an ally one day, write it on your social media bio, and rest there. Being an ally is not a resting place; that’s not how it works. It is a constant, working relationship. It’s something that requires flexibility, patience, and most importantly, action. Being an ally is not inert; it’s active.”
I admire Jane Elliot, the diversity educator known for her “Blue eyes/Brown eyes” exercise, which she first conducted with her third-grade class on April 5, 1968, the day after the assassination of Dr. King, to show the children what experiencing racial segregation would be like. I once watched a video of her lecturing where she asked a classroom of college students to stand up if they would be happy to receive the same treatment that our black citizens receive. When no one stood she stated that in doing so, the student’s inaction plainly showed that they knew what was happening, they didn’t want if for themselves, and so why were they willing to accept it or allow it for others.
This begs the question… why are we, both individually and societally, still allowing things to happen that we know aren’t right? That we know we would not want to experience ourselves.
Almost 60 years have passed since Dr. King gave his I Have a Dream speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. 60 years. And while progress has been made – there is still so much to do.
Our country right now is mired in division. We have seen it play out in a myriad of ways over decades… but even more so in recent years with the unnecessary politicization of both a pandemic and a response to the growing recognition of racial disparities. Both engineered to pull us further apart. I think it is fair to say that this divide has always been there, lurking beneath the surface and waiting for opportune times to resurface. Nevertheless, I believe we stand at a crossroads yet again… and as Senator Sanders once said “if we are going to be honest in our support for Dr. King, it is necessary for us to bring his spirit and his courage into 2022.”
Dr. King talked repeatedly about the need to change our priorities. He talked about the need to invest in community. In his 1967 speech at Stanford University entitled “The Other America,” Dr. King said “That although it may be true that morality cannot be legislated, behavior can be regulated. Even though it may be true that the law cannot change the heart, it can restrain the harvest. And so while the law may not change the hearts of men, it can and it does change the habits of men. And when you begin to change the habits of men, pretty soon the attitudes will be changed.”
So – how do we invest in our communities? How do we foster a resilience that keeps the movement going? While we may want elected leaders to enact change… real change does not take place from the top down. It takes place when millions stand up and fight for justice. True community requires a deep respect and active listening for the needs of the other people within a community. And resilience, the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties, is necessary to keep moving forward.
I think we start with organizations like the Redondo Beach Police Department Community Engagement Board, or The Trevor Project, or the LA Conservation Corp and so many others. We start with having open and frank community town hall discussions like I hosted in the summer of 2020 after George Floyd. We start by re-examining history with raw honesty that is inclusive of all perspectives. We start by talking with our friends and family about the stark realities of what was, and what sadly, still is. We start by questioning the status quo and reform tired systemic issues within criminal justice, economics, healthcare, the environment, social equity, and voting rights and access. We start by removing barriers that impede progress on all these fronts.
And we start by pausing. Pausing to remember that an investment in community requires something that is literally in the word itself. Unity. We cannot do this as a fragmented society. We can only do this in unison, for we have far more in common than we do not. We start by extending our hearts and hands in building coalitions.
Dr. King’s words about Vietnam from 1967 still ring true in the context of today and I paraphrase… “We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace… and justice…” “Each day the war goes on the hatred increases… in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. …Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies.”
United, in community with one another, we can stand resilient. Divided we, and this fragile democracy we have, will fall. Dr. King also said “Darkness cannot drive out darkness. Only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate. only love can do that. Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.”
I stand here today because I have been resilient in the face of my own challenges… acrimony, lies, and hateful rhetoric gifted to me by local
individuals who do not truly know me, who I am, what I believe… but who prejudged and labeled me because they were lied to by demagogues.
My challenges, my “problems” though pale in comparison to the adversity that our fellow brothers and sisters, our community members… people of color, those who are marginalized, our LGBTQ community, and our immigrants to name a few, face on a daily basis – not merely from society in general, but sometimes from even those they love, trust or believe in.
This is why we actively fight on. This is why we continue the movement to march in support of a dream that should have been fulfilled by now. This is why we need to collectively do more to help lift each other up, to see the vision of a promised land from the mountaintop.
To help our children, and their children foster a society connected in love and common purpose, a community that can rise above any adversity and truly be free of old ideas, stereotypes and prejudicial thoughts. A community that can be as one, serving each other as well as our common humanity. A community that can stand up to bullies, bigots, and those who are unwilling to take the outreached hand – and still find a way to march onward.
We are never truly done fighting to move forward. There are forces that will always seek to divide us, distract us, push us backwards and deter progress. We must remain resilient and continue to lock arms, hold each other up, and lift our voices in unity saying the time has come. Our time is now. Together. In unity.