Love will serve our community well and create a world Doctor King envisioned, said Governor Deval Patrick who spoke at the University of Chicago commemoration for Martin Luther King Jr. last week.
A South Side native, Patrick was elected Massachusetts governor in 2006 after serving with the Clinton administration as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. On Wednesday, the Harvard graduate stepped into Rockefeller Chapel confident and smiling; he seemed at home. The audience was filtered with students but a larger part of the neighborhood community came to see this South Side success.
The love preached by MLK drove Patrick’s speech and the audience as well. As he spoke, shouts from the crowd supported his wise ideals. Patrick spoke of the struggles of growing up on the South Side but how a community can come together in King’s memory. For Patrick, it was more than talking about someone the nation had lost. It was about King’s force today, how the community can still be shaped in his likeness. Though Patrick didn’t know the majority of the audience, he made the event seem like a family gathering.
Building on his experience in the South Side, Patrick urged the community to heal from within. Using King’s ideals of service and love, Patrick presented the idea of a community as a family overcoming troubles of the economy and the need to save the American Dream. He also talked of how the nation was built on “civil ideals” that the American people cannot loose sight of, relating this point to his own work with Project 351, an initiative in Massachussets that aims to engage youth in community service. Project 351 takes place on MLK weeken, reinforcing and keeping King’s ideals alive in the nation’s young people.
The governor kept his speech short in favor of questions from the crowd. The audience used this opportunity to ask the Governor about his policies. Sadly, Patrick came off as vague. He managed to keep King in the conversation though. The governor was also questioned about his own youth in Chicago. Patrick used his story as proof of good and why the South Side community should have hope.
A Chicago youth from Young Chicago Authors read a poem in the closing of the event. Inspired from the Republican National Committees’ twitter blunder which attributed Rosa Parks to “ending racism,” the young author moved the audience. The emotional and powerful poem was a meaningful tribute to MLK. Further honoring King, London along with another poet read one of King’s speeches.
Young and old, the audience claimed Patrick as part of the South Side family. The governor moved and motivated the people without drawing away from King.
Sources:
Sharon Averhart
Email: sharonaverhartsellshouses@gmail.com
Sage Smit
Email: leslecaille@me.com