On this Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service, it is important to recognize the power each of us has as an individual agent of change. Dr. King praised the power and spirit of the students who led the civil rights movement with sit-ins, marches, and boycotts. The powerful nonviolent demonstrations of these youths reached the heart of the nation.
In his essay “The Time for Freedom has Come,” MLK writes that, “In an effort to understand the students and to help them understand themselves, I asked one student I know to find a quotation expressing his feeling of our struggle. He was an inarticulate young man, athletically expert and far more poetic with a basketball than with words, but few would have found the quotation he typed on a card and left on my desk early one morning:
I sought my soul, but my soul I could not see.
I sought my God, but he eluded me,
I sought my brother, and I found all three.
Nothing is inevitable, but anything is possible. The Bible says, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” If you would have your classmates and teachers respect you, respect them. If you wish to see recycling in our community, start in your own school and in your own home. If you wish to see Brownsville an even better place to call home, begin to make it so. Gandhi, Dr. King’s role model of nonviolence, said it like this – “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”
On this MLK Day of Service, be that change. Dream of a better tomorrow, and begin working on that tomorrow today.
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