Post-Holiday Reflections on MLK Day of Service; Shouldn't It Be a Day of Community Engagement and First Amendment Activity?

I just googled "Martin Luther King Day of Service" and received about 3,710,000 results. Vice President Biden, Homeland Secretary Napolitano and 10,000 volunteers created care kits for military personnel, disabled veterans, and civilian first responders.  Other local Days of Service included refurbishing school buildings, and participating in Habitat for Humanity-like projects.  Throughout our nation were similar sorts of projects. While all volunteer work should be honored and encouraged, we need to consider whether the holiday is being properly honored by the current variety of volunteer options, or if the holiday has been instituted with a specific focus requiring a redirection of our efforts. 

These community service projects are crucially important to the strength of our civil society.  According to the Corporation for National and Community Service, 61.8 million individuals in the United States contributed 8 billion hours of volunteerism in 2008, the economic value of which is $162 billion.  These volunteer projects are an indispensable part of our civic society.   This writer is encouraged by this statistic and hopes that the number of hours and dollar value of those hours increases exponentially over the coming years.

The federal holiday honoring the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. was enacted November 2, 1983.  Public Act 98-399, the act establishing the federal holiday we often refer to as MLK day, specifies that the day should "should serve as a time for Americans to reflect on the principles of racial equality and nonviolent social change espoused by Martin Luther King, Jr."  The Act also established a Federal Holiday Commission designed to "encourage appropriate ceremonies and activities...relating to the...observance of the Federal legal holiday honoring Martin Luther King, Jr."  

In 1994, Congress enacted the King Holiday and Service Act of 1994. The Act appropriates money to "support the planning and performance of national service opportunities in conjunction with the federal legal holiday honoring the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., effectively authorizing monies to be spent for federal projects in support of the King holiday, mostly through the Corporation for National and Community Service.   The Act specifies that the Corporation should make grants and provide opportunities for individuals to "reflect the life and teaching of Martin Luther King, Jr. such as cooperation and understanding among racial and ethnic groups, nonviolent conflict resolution, equal economic and educational opportunities."

This noble purpose should not be squandered and should not displace the general (and also noble) importance of community service.  In fact, there is a tremendous need for increased community service involvement by the public at large, and in future posts I hope to further consider this assertion. However, MLK day was designed with the explicit purpose of considering the teachings of Dr. King and to advance the goals of cooperation and understanding among racial and ethnic groups, nonviolent conflict resolution and equal economic and educational opportunities.  

It strikes me that we have drawn ourselves away from the purpose of the holiday perhaps because of the inherent challenges that accompany its purpose.  For instance, exploring disparities in economic and educational activities often involves engaging in complex policy discussions about education funding, affirmative action, access to networking opportunities, housing segregation, disparate police interactions, access to small business financing, and numerous other areas of our society where the experience of citizenship differs among members of those appearing to belong to differing racial and ethnic groups.  

Furthermore, unlike in King's day, racial and ethnic segregation and disparities are often not due to government policies designed with the express intent of inflicting different rights upon members of different groups, but it may also be the case that certain policies may have different affects upon individuals in different racial, ethnic, social, and income groups.  It is also unlikely that any policy advocates can uniformly proclaim that their message is the sole successor to King's message--making it harder for any policy leaders to advance discourse by citing to King's message, or being able to successfully use King's legacy as a means to open necessary discourse.  In fact, unlike in years past, policy advocates on both the left and right of the political spectrum proclaim to be have discovered the unique method of securing equal economic and educational opportunities among individuals of different racial and ethnic groups. 

Thus, although there is a severe disparity of method, there is a potential unity of purpose that could make it so valuable for efforts in support of the King Holiday to be drawn towards dialogue and other activities that encourage reflection on current application of the principles of racial equality and nonviolent social change.  

It is more likely than not that it is fear of the unknown and conflict that prevents municipal corporations, community associations, and the Corporation for National and Community Service from insisting that its King Day efforts be narrowly tailored to the purpose specified in the above-mentioned 1983 congressional act.  Alternatively put, it is far easier to organize high school kids to bake brownies for the homeless, but it is far harder to organize a dialogue among high school kids concerning the diverse causes of homelessness.   It is easier to hold an event that communicates the vision of racial harmony, it is far harder to sit down and investigate the stumbling blocks preventing the reality of the vision. 

It is my contention that it only through navigating this great unknown that we as a society have any chance of realizing the vision that gave rise to our determination to recognize the efforts of King with a national holiday. I hope this essay will encourage all of us to engage ourselves in activities in future King holidays that are truly worthy of the mission to honor the birth of Martin Luther King, Jr. through reflecting on the life and teaching of Martin Luther King, Jr. and current opportunities for cooperation and understanding among racial and ethnic groups, current opportunities for nonviolent conflict resolution and current opportunities to achieve equal economic and educational opportunities.