For second year, Ventura County celebration goes virtual
Ventura County’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day 36th observance Monday celebrated the civil rights leader and his role to improve access to voting.
Hundreds of people took part in the virtual celebration that included messages from a host of civic leaders, music from local choirs and Bible readings and prayer by local youths and ministers. On screen, participants raised their hands in acclamation after each speaker and performance.
The event was organized by the Martin Luther King Jr. Committee of Ventura County, and members wore bright yellow shirts in a show of solidarity.
The commemoration opened with a pre-recorded message from Bernice King, the civil rights leader’s daughter. She called untrue a headline suggesting her family would not be celebrating the day if voting access legislation hadn’t passed by Monday.
Instead, she urged people to continue her father’s message and use King’s day and the commemorations to fight for laws that help people get to the polls.
“My father would speak and act in a way to ensure that this nation lives up to its promise of democracy by putting pressure on our United States Senate to bypass the filibuster,” King said. “And instead of taking the King holiday off (legislators) should make it a day on to pass the Voting Rights Act.”
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Ventura City Councilmember Lorrie Brown welcomed guests to the event and spoke about how all people are recipients of King’s dream.
“We stand in the gap so generations can remember and never forget – of all races and all colors and all creeds so they continue where we and they left off,” said Brown, a third-generation Venturan and the first African American elected to the Ventura Council.
She said she’s been told that recalling the difficulties of the past brings scars. In her three years on the Council, she has learned the importance of remembering and stirring up “good trouble.”
“I say remembering the past – the good, the bad and the scars – is empowering and should be written and talked about for years to come,” she said.
Keynote speaker Perry Martin Jr. spoke about the impact and loss of the pandemic. He talked about how many marginalized Americans are worse off than when King was alive.
“The fight for and towards the dream of equality and social justice mustn’t be laid aside,” said Perry, a professor of business at Moorpark College and an Army veteran. “It must not waver.”
Martin asked participants what the civil rights leader would wish if he were alive for his 93rd birthday to witness what happened to George Floyd and the protests and riots that followed.
The speaker also touched on the scourge of racism, the need for nonviolent protest and the belief that good people must not remain silent in the face of injustice.
“For it is through civic engagement, conflict resolution and sitting at the table as equals by which we can hear the voices of those unheard,” Martin said. “Those voices are generally the voices of the poor, disenfranchised, the disgusted and the angry.”
Martin spoke about how King was convinced that many were committed to the cause of social justice and about the event’s theme “One People, One Nation, One Dream… Let’s Keep Moving Forward.”
He said America must undergo a radical revolution of values and understand that Americans’ destiny is tied together.
“We need each other,” Martin said.
Finally, he called on people to eradicate hatred and bigotry, to work to dismantle institutional and systemic racism within law enforcement, academia, industry, government and in the home but especially in the nation.
He said faith and love, which informed King’s work, were the gift he left.
“Use that gift and make it become a realization that we as one people, one nation, one dream to keep moving forward can only be done in love,” Martin said.
The 90-minute event was recorded and can be viewed at facebook.com/MLKventura/videos.
For more information about the county’s King committee or to volunteer, visit mlkventuracounty.com.
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