This year for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, our team is reflecting, strategizing, and holding space to acknowledge how heavy the present moment feels. Typically, we remember Dr. King’s legacy of principled nonviolence and celebrate the gains made by the Civil Rights Movement while encouraging contemporary activism and civic engagement. It’s frankly difficult to think about those gains at a time when we’re watching the rollback of those rights, and an expansion of fascist, white supremacist policies wreaking havoc on innocent people in the U.S. and abroad. We are heartbroken by the deaths of Keith Porter Jr. and Renee Nicole Good at the hands of ICE agents, just as we are enraged by the record number of people who died in ICE custody last year.
At DJC, we believe in the abolition of policing and incarceration, which, of course, includes reckless law enforcement terrorizing Black and Brown immigrant communities and harassing any and everyone they choose. Our ED, Nancy A. Parker, spoke at a rally on January 13, calling upon the city council and Mayor Sheffield to expel ICE from Detroit and declare it a sanctuary city. She was quoted in the Detroit Free Press, saying:
“I am tired. Why do we keep having to come out here and plead the humanity of human beings,” Parker said to the agreeing crowd. “This country resorts to violence upon violence, upon violence … and has the audacity to look at people like us, who are tired, and say we are the ones rioting in the streets when they’re dropping bombs and executing human beings? We all have eyes … we want ICE out. It is under no misgivings that they’re keeping anyone safe. We are literally operating under fascist control and we are being told ‘stand down.’ There is no more law of the land.”
Like Nancy, so many of us are exhausted by the seemingly endless cruelty and chaos on display from those in power. And like Nancy, our whole team is determined to build collective power and come through this historical moment stronger and better prepared for the future. The work of building the world we want to live in can be daunting, and we may find ourselves disappointed by the possibility that the change we want to see won’t come in our lifetimes. While that may be the case, the people who created these inhumane policies are banking on that reality stopping people from fighting back.
As Dr. King wrote in “Letter from the Birmingham Jail”, “An unjust law is a code that a majority inflicts on a minority that is not binding on itself. This is difference made legal. On the other hand, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow, and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal.” While we may have made legal progress because of the Civil Rights Movement, the same principle holds true today. We are watching uneven applications of the law coupled with reckless violence. We cannot comply, we cannot turn away, and we must do everything in our power to protect the most vulnerable among us.
As we enter into this new year, we are finding ways to sit with our anger and sadness as well as act on it. We are committed to taking time for rest and joy so that we do not burn ourselves out, and we are determined to fight back with all the tools at our disposal alongside you. We are, as ever, grateful for your support.
If you’re in Detroit this MLK Day, please join us from 10 am to 2 pm for an MLK Symposium at U of M’s Detroit Center (3663 Woodward Ave, Suite 150, Detroit, MI 48201). Nancy A. Parker will be speaking alongside Orlando Bailey.
