Posted by: Bethany on 01/21/2008 08:45 PM
Updated by: thepinetree on 01/21/2008 09:23 PM
Expires: 01/01/2013 12:00 AM
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Sonora MLK Celebration ‘The Beloved Community’ Focuses on Local Change ~ By Bethany Monk (With Video)
Sonora, C.A….More than 200 people packed the Sonora High School auditorium on Sunday, January 20th for a celebration honoring slain civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr…..
The program was presented by the Motherlode Martin Luther King, Jr. Committee, a non-profit organization in Sonora. The event was held in commemoration of Dr. King’s birthday observance, which falls on the third Monday of the month. This year's observance fell on Jan. 21.
The committee’s 13th annual celebration, themed “The Beloved Community: Global Vision, Local Reality,” focused on Dr. King’s global vision for social justice by way of taking action at the community level. One of the issues at the forefront of the event – which included skits, music, dramatic interpretations, and a short film, all honoring King – was the issue of homelessness in the tri-county area.
The committee invited Beetle Barbour, housing resources director at the Amador-Tuolumne Community Action Agency, to serve as the event’s guest speaker. Barbour was born and raised in the South during the 1950’s and said she remembered vividly such things as water fountains for “Whites Only” and “Colored” in public places. However, she was “lucky,” she added, to have “…two democratic parents who marched in the civil rights movement”; she grew up surrounded and inspired by Dr. King’s words.
“Today that cause goes far beyond racism,” Barbour said or Dr. King’s legacy. She urged people to “get pushed out of your comfort zone” and attend things events such as Board of Supervisors meetings to help make a difference in community issues.
Last spring, the Action Agency and several volunteers surveyed homeless people in Tuolumne as part of the tri-county Continuum of Care program. Affordable housing ranked as the number one top concern of those surveyed, Barbour said. The survey, also conducted in Calaveras and Amador counties, found that there are about 400 homeless people among the three counties; 307 are adults, 83 are children.
“We still haven’t figured it out in this country where we have so much abundance and so much plentitude,” Barbour said. “We still don’t know how to keep a roof up over everybody’s head and good food in everybody’s belly … and give everybody the opportunity for education and prosperity.”
She invited the public to take action and get involved at the local level even if it involves listening.
“Listening is one of the prime strategies for non-violent change that Dr. King advocated,” Barbour said. “If I can do it, you can do it.”
The event also featured a performance by “The Theatricats,” a theater group from the Sierra Conservation Center; the showing “In the Eyes of the Homeless,” a documentary created by Hallie Bateman last year when she was a senior at Sonora High School; a video presentation set to Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech by Steven Fletcher; and several musical performances by Dennis Brown, Tom McLaughlin, Charlie Mills, Jackie Sample, Connie Scott, Kathy Seaton and Jim Soderberg. Several students in the county received awards for their essays and projects inspired by Dr. King’s non-violent quest for equality and justice.
The celebration opened with the audience and performers singing “We are the World” together, and ended with audience members holding hands and singing “We Shall Overcome.”
Born on Jan. 15, 1929, Dr. King was the youngest person (35 years old) to have received the Nobel Peace Prize. He gave the prize money, more than $50,000, to the civil rights movement. He was assassinated in Memphis, Tenn. on April 4, 1968.
Call (209) 532-6810 for more information regarding Motherlode Martin Luther King, Jr. Committee. For more information on the Tuolumne Community Action Agency call (209) 223-1483 or visit http://mytuolumne.com/atcaa.
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