Skip to main content

Thoughts After the Martin Luther King Jr. March

Tonight, I, my classmates, and people in my town participated in a candlelight march around town in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

There was chatting, some singing, some hand-shaking and meeting of new people. Many pictures were taken with phones and many candles were blown out only to be re-lit from a neighbor's. It was a relaxed atmosphere. 

We had a police escort.

Let me reiterate: we had a police escort. We felt safe and relaxed walking down the streets of town. No one made threats or shouted rude comments or even so much as honked their horns because of blocked traffic. It just made me realize how lucky we are.

In King's day, the police didn't show up at marches to escort people. They weren't there to make people feel safe, but to make them feel afraid. To beat, discourage, shame, abuse, arrest, and silence them.

It didn't work. 

It didn't work, and in 2014, here we all are walking down the streets of a Southern town with the police to escort us safely.

In King's day, the marches weren't relaxed. Or safe. They weren't something you did because you were required to go for class. People who showed up to these marches knew that they could be harassed, arrested, and abused.

They did it anyway.

They did it anyway, and in 2014 a group of people of different races chatted and sang and made new acquaintances as we marched in their honor.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day isn't just about one man. It was about all the people who marched, protested, and refused to be silent in their demands for human rights and equality under the law. 

Today is not just about the past, either. It's about right now, about us and the problems we still face. It's about appreciating the changes King made while refusing to ignore the changes we need to make. It's about realizing that the fact that we had a respectful police escort to make us feel safe is still amazing, and for many, sadly unusual. 

Comments

  1. Ty UnglebowerMon Jan 20, 08:04:00 PM CST

    Good post. And I think Dr. King himself would very much agree with, "It was about all the people who marched, protested, and refused to be silent in their demands for human rights and equality under the law."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. LauraWed Jan 22, 06:56:00 PM CST

      :) Thanks for stopping by.

      Apparently, the KKK put up flyers that day...which were taken down... :P Ridiculous how some people will use their freedom of speech to try to deny others their freedom of speech.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Comments make me happy, so leave lots! :) I will usually reply to each one, so click Notify Me to read my replies.

Popular posts from this blog

Review: Hemlock Grove, ep. 1 and 2

Hello! I'm back from my blogging hiatus. I've been on a horror kick lately, and most recently, I watched the first two episodes of Netflix's Hemlock Grove. I'm a bit late to this series, but for what it's worth, here's my review. I have some...issues.  Pacing It's based on a novel, and you can tell. Once the show introduces something that might be interesting or lead to tension and conflict, it snatches it away like a precious plot-gem that it doesn't want you to see. There is way too much exposition and filler. The plot hangs together pretty well, but not much really happens. Case in point, it should not have taken two whole episodes to find out Main Character is a werewolf. Especially since everyone seems clued into this fact and accepts it as truth -- except the viewers. Then suddenly Rich Boy is asking if he can watch the transformation like it's understood that Poor Kid Main Character is a werewolf. No warning, no lead-up, nothing.
Post a Comment
CLICK TO READ ON >>

Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow by Faïza Guène, a YA Book By A Young Author

Review time! Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow is a young adult novel by a young adult, so I was very interested to read it. There's also a #MuslimShelfSpace tag going around, and this review is a nod to that. The idea is that there's been a lot of stereotypes and anti-Muslim sentiment spread around, so buying and boosting books about and by Muslims can help educate people and break down harmful stereotypes.  The author is French with an Algerian background, and  Guène  wrote Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow when she was in her late teens. Although the novel is not autobiographical, she shares many things with its main character. Doria, like her creator, is the child of immigrants and lives in poor suburban housing projects.   Guène   wrote that she realized girls like herself weren't really represented in books, and felt that Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow was a way to tell the stories of people in the suburbs who are ignored by the elites of French literature. Plot: Life Sucks, Until It Doesn
2 comments
CLICK TO READ ON >>

King Arthur Sucks.

I wrote a review of The Greenstone Grail by Amanda Hemingway , in which I applauded the book for being the first Arthurian adaptation I had read that I didn't despise. I mean, how could I? Despite the book's other problems, it had aliens riding motherfucking dragons!!! Aliens! Dragons! Parallel universes!  After reading my review, one of my friends asked me why I hate Arthurian legend so much.  Well.  Perhaps one of the reasons I liked The Greenstone Grail 's take on the Holy Grail myth was because it was so different.  Most Arthurian adaptations fall along the same lines. It's the same damn story told almost the same damn way all the time. But  The Greenstone Grail took place in modern times, borrowing from the Holy Grail and Arthurian myths without making it so central to the plot that there was no room for other stuff like imagination.  Say whatever else you want about this book ( and believe me, I did ), it had imagination. Its main character can dimension-
2 comments
CLICK TO READ ON >>