Monday January 21 is the annual MLK Day holiday. For 27 years Tucsonans marched from the UA Mall (Old Main) to Reid Park to celebrate this great civil rights leader who was struck down on April 4, 1968. I’ve walked part way a number of times with this march, and it was a long way from the University of Arizona to Reid Park, and back.

This year the March is moved to the UA campus and will begin at the MLK Student Center at 1322 E. 1st St. (2nd Street and Mountain) and march to Old Main (east side). Then there will be a celebration from 10 to 3:30 p.m. at the UA Mall.

For more information contact Donna Liggins at 520-237-7806, Dierdra Jones at 520-370-6528, or Clarence Boykins at Clarence540@aol.com.

And please join in this march & celebration to remember a great civil rights leader.

Today is the annual holiday in memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, civil rights leader who was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968. Being as that tragic event was over 43 years ago, there are many young people now who do not remember Dr. King, who was born on January 15, 1929.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr

I came across one of his famous quotes recently:

“Cowardice asks the question, ‘Is it safe?’
Expediency asks the question, ‘Is it politic?’
Vanity asks the question, ‘Is it popular?’
But, conscience asks the question, ‘Is it right?’
And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because one’s conscience tells one that it is right.”

Today let us reflect about Dr. King’s legacy about what is right to do in political issues, especially this year as we embark upon another Presidential election, redistricting of current maps, civility in public discourse.

And FREE today at the Loft Cinema (3233 E. Speedway) at 5 pm.: “Do the Right Thing” 1989 movie directed by Spike Lee:

http://www.loftcinema.com/node/2766

“DO THE RIGHT THING, Spike Lee’s incendiary (and controversial) look at race relations in America, circa New York City in 1989, is a joyful, tumultuous masterpiece – perhaps one of the best films ever made about race in America, revealing racial prejudices and stereotypes in all their guises and demonstrating how a deadly riot can erupt out of a series of small misunderstandings.
Set on one block in Bedford-Stuyvesant on the hottest day of the summer, the movie showcases the whole spectrum of ethnically-diverse life in this neighborhood, raises the heat to a high boil, and then leaves it up to us to decide if, in the end, anybody actually does the “right thing.” Featuring a stellar cast including Danny Aiello as Sal, the pizza parlor owner; Lee himself as Mookie, the lazy pizza-delivery guy; John Turturro and Richard Edson as Sal’s sons; Lee’s sister Joie as Mookie’s sister Jade; Rosie Perez as Mookie’s girlfriend Tina; Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee as the block elders, Da Mayor and Mother Sister; Giancarlo Esposito as Mookie’s hot-headed friend Buggin’ Out; Bill Nunn as the boom-box toting Radio Raheem; and Samuel L. Jackson as deejay Mister Señor Love Daddy.
Brash, bold and highly entertaining, DO THE RIGHT THING is a rich and nuanced film to watch, treasure, and learn from–over and over again.”

Let us remember Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. today and what he stood (and marched) for.

UPDATE: My comments on the MLK events in Tucson below in comment section.

Join Arizona Public Media for a historic guest appearance by Freedom Rider, Dr. Bernard LaFayette, Jr. commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the 1961 Freedom Rides.

The event takes place Monday, April 25 from 6 to 8:30 p.m. in the UA Modern Languages building, room 350. Free admission, seating is limited. Sign up here for the Tucson event or the April 23 event at Arizona State University’s Eight-Arizona PBS Studio A:
(http://www.asset.asu.edu/new/events.html#community_events).

The event will include a presentation by Dr. LaFayette, previews of the PBS film “Freedom Riders,” plus new local documentary: “Barrios & Barriers: Tucson’s Civil Rights Era.”

photo courtesy of AZPM

Following the screening there will be a panel presentation featuring: Freedom Rider & civil rights pioneer, Bernard LaFayette, Jr.; Clarence Boykins, Director, Tucson/So AZ Black Chamber of Commerce; & Guadalupe Castillo, Co-Chair of Derechos Humanos; History Professor at Pima Community College.

Co-Hosted by: the Nonviolence Legacy Project / Culture of Peace Alliance and Arizona Public Media.

American Experience PBS: FREEDOM RIDERS is the powerful, harrowing and ultimately inspirational story of six months in 1961 that changed America forever. From May until November 1961, more than 400 black and white
Americans risked their lives – many endured savage beatings and imprisonment
– for simply traveling together on buses and trains as they journeyed
through the Deep South. Deliberately violating Jim Crow laws, the Freedom
Riders met with bitter racism and mob violence along the way, sorely testing
their belief in nonviolent activism. For more information about the film
visit the American Experience website.
http://phoenixnonviolence.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b18c41f2c4a93ae2f7c312cde&id=6cf1360a08&e=a8ea6785ce

Dr. Bernard LaFayette, Jr., has been a Civil Rights Movement activist,
minister, educator, lecturer and is a global authority on the strategy of
nonviolent social change. He co-founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC) in 1960, where he was a leader of the Nashville movement.
In 1961, he was beaten and jailed during the Freedom Rides. Miraculously, he
also survived an assassination attempt by the Ku Klux Klan in Selma,
Alabama.

He served on the Executive Staff of Martin Luther King, Jr., and was
appointed by Dr. King as National Program Administrator for the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and National Coordinator for the 1968 Poor Peoples’ Campaign.