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Honor MLK legacy: Show up, speak up

30th annual banquet calls for unity against structural racism, classism
January 19, 2018

At the 30th annual banquet in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., nearly 250 guests were encouraged to show up and speak up about the things that matter,

“We are called together tonight to remember Dr. Martin Luther King and to remember we are not to judge people by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character,” Unitarian Universalist Rev. Michelle Collins told guests at the Jan. 13 banquet, quoting the civil rights leader during her invocation. “What we need now is a collective purpose and to speak up!”

Last year, U.S. Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester made history as Delaware’s first woman and first African-American elected to Congress, and she said the message of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is just as relevant as it was when he was organizing boycotts and nonviolent protest.

“He is more relevant now than last year or the year before,” Blunt Rochester said. “Because Dr. King believed in human rights. He believed in justice. He believed in peace, and he believed in love.”

During his keynote address, Dr. Tony Allen, executive vice president and provost of Delaware State University, told the story of 75 “dreamers” at Del State. Dreamers, students who were brought to the United States illegally as undocumented immigrants when they were children, have since 2012 been allowed to temporarily live, work and study under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or DACA, an immigration policy initiated during the Obama administration.

In September 2017, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced plans to rescind the policy, but Allen said the Del State community has rallied to keep dreamers safe.

“If you come to Del State, there is a sense of collective responsibility to the least advantaged of all of us,” Allen said. “We are working with those who are traditionally locked out of education, and my 75 dreamers have a collective GPA of 3.75. Seventy-five dreamers are a part of our family, and we will never desert the power of the possible.”

Allen prompted his audience to recall King was not always seen as a peacemaker when he was organizing protests and boycotts, and to remember, from the comfort of their middle-class lifestyles, the structural racism and classism not everyone can escape.

“Today consider, we should be focusing on all those folks who are still left behind in education, incarceration,” Allen said. “Now its time for us to refuse to accept the ‘is-ness’ that is today and look to the future, to the ‘ought-ness’ of tomorrow.”

 

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