The late civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is honored today with a national holiday. In San Diego, King’s legacy was honored at the 35th Annual All Peoples Celebration in Balboa Park. About 700 people of all ages, races, religions and nationalities gathered for the first in-person celebration in three years.
Andrea Guerrero is the executive director of Alliance San Diego, the community organization that hosted today’s celebration. “I think because of everything we’ve gone through over the last three years, the energy of being in person is undeniable. It’s extraordinary,” Guerrero said.
There were 30 organizations represented and many volunteers at the celebration.
“We also have future leaders. We have young people in elementary school, middle school and high school and college who are here to recommit to Dr. King’s vision,” Guerrero said.
The theme of the event was “bridging.”
Guerrero quoted King as saying, "‘We need to build bridges, not walls,’ and that’s what we’re doing here today.”
Author and columnist Steve Phillips told KPBS that San Diego has become a model of bridging: "by bridging the barriers between different groups and nationalities and cultures and finding the common points of connection and working together on common issues.”
Phillps was the keynote speaker for the celebration
“I was very humbled [by the invitation] because of the work that has been done by groups like Alliance San Diego and all the activists and organizers here to bring about King’s dream, and really create the kind of community and society that we should all be working for,” Phillips said.
Phillips’ speech centered around King’s concept of “the world house."
"San Diego represents a world house, poised here on the border of Mexico, by the Pacific rim,” Phillips said, “[with] all the different communities of the world here ... how do we make that a house of justice and equality?"
Phillips said the way to do that "is to participate in democracy. Get more people to vote.”
Phillips said he hopes his audience recognizes "that King was a social change activist. He was not somebody who stood for the status quo and shook things up. And that’s the fundamental legacy that we need to be carrying, is to call out and speak out against injustice and inequality wherever we see it.”
One of Phillips’ earliest memories is witnessing Dr. King speak when he was a child in Cleveland.
“His model. His example. His legacy has been extraordinarily inspirational and motivating for my own life, to try to do everything I can to try to carry on the cause of making this a more just and equal world,” Phillips said.
Guerrero had this reflection on what she thought Dr. King might say about the celebration: “I think he’d be thrilled, but I think he’d also say when we were done, at the close of the program, after we sang ‘We Shall Overcome,’ he’d say, ‘Let’s get to work.’ And that’s what we need to do ... We need to exercise our humanity and treat everyone with dignity and respect. That was the lesson of Dr. King, those who came before him. That’s the lesson that we teach today and the work that we have to do tomorrow.”
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The 35th Annual All Peoples Celebration on Monday was centered around Dr. King’s words, “Let’s build bridges, not walls.”
