Move the Holiday

The year 2000 was the first year that all 50 states honored the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with a Holiday by name (yes, only a few years ago). And for the first time since its inception, this year every county in the country now honors the Holiday (yup, 1 county in a southern state had been holding out all this time). And though I’m glad that the holiday is largely celebrated nationwide (despite the fact that many of the currently serving lawmakers on Capitol Hill voted against the MLK Holiday in Congress in the 80’s), I think that way too many people take the Holiday for granted. Way too many people just see the day as an extension to their weekend, a day off from school, or just an opportunity to laze around. If that’s you, then you’re totally missing the point.

Ok, I’ll admit it; I was once like that too. I recall (and now regret) missing 4 major Keynote speakers (Actor Edward James Olmos, Professor Cornell West, Dr. Grace Lee Boggs, Dr. Ben Carson) during the MLK symposium at my undergraduate institution. In each case I was either at my dorm sleepin’ in or away from campus taking advantage of my 3 day weekend. I did, in all those years, participate in other MLK day events, but it was pure apathy that led me to miss out on those speakers.

And that’s the problem; apathy.

I don’t fault people for missing events when they must work, or when they can’t make it out for illness or other such reasons. But when you sit on your “duff,” or sleep in just because you can, or when you plan a short vacation over the MLK day weekend, that troubles me. Considering the magnitude of what Martin Luther King Jr. did for not only Black people in America, but for all citizens of this nation, no one should apathetically disregard this holiday.

When I first began to write this post, I was going to say that maybe there shouldn’t be a “King” holiday. My reasoning was that people put so much impetus on just this one day (with respect to racial injustice and inequality) while spending much of the year not living the standards of racial justice that MLK stood for. In fact, it sometimes seems as though King is only in our consciousness on his holiday or during Black History Month.

That’s just not good enough.

“The Dream” should live with us all the time and at any moment leap to the forefront of our conscious thinking any day of the year.

However, in present day (yet-racist and prejudiced) America, I know that if there were no holiday at all, King and all he stood for would be largely lost or forgotten in the era that was the Civil Rights movement. So I’ve got a better idea.

After much ruminating and weighing the effects, I’ve decided that the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday should be moved from Monday to Wednesday. That way people couldn’t abuse the holiday by taking a weekend vacation. Travel would be difficult to execute because the Holiday would be sandwiched in the middle of the work week. Then people would have to be reminded about why they have the day off. Attendance at symposium events, like the ones I ignored in my youthful apathy, would be up. Ultimately the purpose of the Holiday would be better fulfilled because people would be forced, by default, to pay attention to it.

Apathy bugs me in general. But apathy surrounding a holiday that affects us all; apathy around a man who literally gave his life doing what many today could never even imagine; apathy around a holiday that is the purest representation of Justice (in a time when injustice is ever-rampant) the Federal Government recognizes. Disregarding the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday is simply unacceptable (and I mean you actually need to get up and do something to honor it).

I certainly do hope that you, the reader, participated in a forum, service, or community event surrounding Martin Luther King Jr. Day. If not, I do hope that as you go through this year, what he worked for lives on in the forefront of your mind. I also hope that you would give yourself over to the concept of community, servitude, and equality. And in the King Holidays to come, please make the effort to participate in events in Dr. King’s honor. We all owe it to him to do so.

-Maelstrom

…15 years…and not a day goes by…the pain diminishes, but it never goes away…you are truly missed…