Hundreds join on King holiday to honor legacy
Marin City civic leaders and residents honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on Monday said it’s more important than ever to pass his legacy on to the next generation.
For the 23rd consecutive year, a celebration of King’s life was held with speeches, prayers, songs and dance. The Marin City Community Services District livestreamed the celebration this year because of pandemic restrictions on gatherings.
About 200 people attended the holiday event — which had the theme of “passing the torch” — to listen to King’s lesser known speeches, interviews and sermons, and to listen to a panel of young Black activists discuss structural racism, inequality and police brutality.
King was a prominent leader in the civil rights movement until his assassination in Memphis, Tenn., on April 4, 1968. It was less than a week after he began planning the “Poor People’s Campaign,” a nonviolent march to the Capitol to end economic and racial inequity.
Oshalla Diana Marcus, director of Marin City Arts and Culture, led the panel discussion on Monday. She asked the speakers if King would have demanded change from Republican Party today the same way he did from the “Dixie” Democrats in the 1960s.
The reply was a resounding “yes.”
Malachia Hoover, a resident and community leader, said the Black community must lead the charge in fighting for equity and abolishing structural racism. She said marginalized communities cannot rely on any political party to end systemic racism.
“We still have not attained the basic human right just to live freely,” said Hoover, 30. “We’re still getting shot down just because of the color of our skin. The civil rights movement was decades ago, but we’re still fighting that fight. So it’s all about the Black agenda and whoever is in control.”
Shannon Bynum, 29, and Ayana Morgan-Woodard, 22, said Black people are owed reparations for the past oppression that has stopped the accumulation of generational wealth.
“The fact that the American government cannot recognize that we are owed that just shows this government was never built for us, it was built by us,” Morgan-Woodard said. “They never wanted to see us succeed. And that’s why they are scared to give us the reparations.”
Bynum said many people hijack the Black Lives Matter movement for political gain.
“They treat us like a trend or something,” he said. “They advertise to us, they advertise us and they don’t give back. There’s no reciprocity in that.”
The Marin City Community Services District gave community service awards to Paul Austin, the late Kerry Peirson, Mikyla Williams, Lynette Egenlauf, Darneshia Morgan, the Marin Community Foundation, Melissa Cadet and David Finnane.
Other speakers included Lisa Bennett, a member of the Sausalito Marin City School District board, and Stephanie Moulton-Peters, District 3 representative on the Board of Supervisors.
They said there is a dire need to address racial inequities in Marin.
“Our children here in the 94965 and beyond are living in a system that values White over all other,” Bennett said. “In a system that has been dominated and colonized in the name of commerce, in the name of capitalism.”