Monday, Jan. 15 is Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Detroit is celebrating with its 21st Annual MLK Day Rally and March, beginning at noon and concluding at 3 p.m. with a community lunch. This year, while honoring the historic legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the event will explore how all struggles for liberation intersect.
The rally and march will be co-chaired by Aurora Harris, lecturer in African American Studies at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, and Abayomi Azikiwe, editor of the Pan-African News Wire. The event will feature speakers and artists from the Detroit area who will highlight the importance of community organizers and cultural workers in southeastern Michigan.
Major speakers will include U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib and UAW International President Shawn Fain, who will discuss current issues including the crisis in Palestine and the fight for labor rights.
As the past year has seen a major wave of union organizing and strikes, labor unions are encouraged to participate in the march to symbolize the necessity of organizing.
Alongside labor activism, the march and rally will acknowledge Dr. King’s anti-war and peace traditions. In early 1968, Dr. King was assassinated during his intervention in a sanitation worker’s strike. A year before, he stated that he was strongly opposed to the U.S. war in Vietnam.
“Today we are facing yet another genocidal war against the people of Gaza in Palestine. Thousands have been killed including many children utilizing bombs and other weapons supplied by the U.S. government,” the MLK Day event’s Facebook page says. “Instead of ending the war in Palestine and Ukraine, the current administration is demanding over $100 billion more for military adventures and containments from the Middle East and Eastern Europe to the Asia-Pacific and the southern border areas with the U.S.”
This year’s MLK Day Rally & March will call for a cessation of militarism in Palestine and across the globe, as well as to honor six decades of mass movements in Detroit.
The Michigan Emergency Committee Against War & Injustice (MECAWI) held its first MLK Day Rally & March in downtown Detroit in 2004. Since 2019, Detroit’s MLK Day event has taken place at the Historic St. Matthew’s-St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church, the first independent African American Church in the city.
In June 1963, King first delivered a version of his “I Have a Dream” speech in Detroit.
Subscribe to Metro Times newsletters.
Follow us: Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter
