Posted by Jen Gubitz, Legislative Assistant

With a day off and a commemorative postage stamp, we honor Martin Luther King’s accomplishments on behalf of the Civil Rights community. Our public leaders praise King’s dream, his passion, and his leadership at memorial ceremonies across the country – meanwhile slashing necessary benefits vital to the health, education, and safety of our nation’s most poor and disenfranchised citizens.

It seems that many consider the Civil Rights Movement as a thing of the past – based primarily on issues of race. Certainly, when we look at monumental decisions such as Brown vs. Board of Education, a court decision requiring desegregation of America’s school system, or racial disproportionality of incarcerated individuals – we sadly realize the faults of much of the ground covered in this ongoing march towards equality.

Although legally abolished, segregation still exists in the purest of forms. Our poorest Americans do not have access to equal education; our immigrant and GLBT communities are still relegated to a seat of second class citizenship; religious intolerance abounds in our political and social sectors; access for our disability community still falters.

Let us certainly continue to remember the great steps marched by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., for which he dreamt of a nation where “all men are created equal.” But may we look to a time when we as a community have expanded our dream that in “every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics,” to include the immigrant, the poor and homeless, disabled, gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender communities – so that truly we “will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"”

And when that day comes, let us not feel guilty for taking a day off in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King and the future Civil Rights renegades who will follow in his footsteps. The Civil Rights Movement is not over and it is still our responsibility to fight against the injustice suffered by so many.

To learn more about Brown V. Board of Ed:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1537409

Other interesting links:

www.civilrights.org - Leadership Conference on Civil Rights
www.hrc.org  - Human Rights Campaign
www.adl.org - Anti-Defamation League
http://www.mlkday.gov/
http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/ - Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute
www.thekingcenter.org – Official MLK Website