#sparkchamber 012025 — MLK Jr. and Inauguration Day
Each year on the third Monday in January, America celebrates the life and legacy of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Every 4th year, on January 20th, America swears in the president voted into office the previous November. This year, both events happen on the same day.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Baptist minister and a major leader of the civil rights movement that began in the mid-1950s. Through nonviolent activism and uplifting sermons and speeches, he played a pivotal role in the creation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — ending segregation in public places, and banning employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin — and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 — aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote as guaranteed under the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Together, these two acts are considered the most far-reaching and consequential pieces of civil rights legislation in U.S. history.
Over the years since the passage of those landmark acts, the Supreme Court has been chipping away at the law. Fast forward to today — literally today — Donald Trump will be inaugurated to his second term in office, where he and his administration have “little interest in enforcing whatever is left of it.”
“During his first term and in the four years since, he’s made it abundantly clear that he does not think people’s votes matter. He insisted the results in 2020 were illegitimate, and harassed government officials to “find” fake votes for him. He helped instigate the deadly January 6 insurrection in an attempt to overturn the election results and disenfranchise millions of people. And in the run-up to the 2024 election, he and his campaign filed spurious “election integrity” lawsuits in the courts and hatched “secret plans” with the Republican Speaker of the House to perhaps seize power even if he lost again.
“For as much as Trump has already devalued votes, the next votes people cast will matter even less. Conservative elites have spent decades whittling away at the Voting Rights Act, which was once a robust tool to protect the ability of people of color to participate in the political process. In a second Trump term, the few protections left will crumble, and free and fair elections will be pushed further out of reach.”
An arbitrary fluke of the calendar unites the idealism of our history with the anxiety of our future. And here we are at that crossroads. It’s easy to disengage and hope for the best; hard not to feel small, powerless, and alone; understandable to resent, condemn, lash out.
But let us listen to — and be inspired by — the words of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. himself. In his I Have a Dream speech, he says, “Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.” In his book The Strength to Love, he writes, “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” From his Where Do We Go From Here? address, he affirms, “We must walk on in the days ahead with an audacious faith in the future.” And, in his April 1960 address at Spelman College, he advocates, “If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”
Amen Dr. King.
Repeating the words of outgoing president Joe Biden in his farewell address, “Now it’s your turn to stand guard. May you all be the keeper of the flame. May you keep the faith.”
Yes, let us, each and every, do our best to heed all of these wise words as we find ourselves navigating the magnitude of this urgent moment of now.
1.] Where do ideas come from?
Love is the only creative, redemptive, transforming power in the universe.
2.] What is the itch you are scratching?
I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.
3.] Early bird or night owl? Tortoise or hare?
We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.
4.] How do you know when you are done?
You know, a lot of people don’t love themselves. And they go through life with deep and haunting emotional conflicts. So the length of life means that you must love yourself. And you know what loving yourself also means? It means that you’ve got to accept yourself.