The 38th annual All Peoples Celebration Monday in Balboa Park featured music and dance performances as community organizations came together to share breakfast and lift one another up.
The nonprofit Alliance San Diego hosted the event.
LaWana Richmond is the board president of Alliance San Diego. She said events like this are important for people involved in activist work.
"I feel like the importance of this breakfast is less as a demonstration or anything (than) as a celebration of joy and love and peace," she said. "(It's) an opportunity for us to remember that joy itself is resistance."
The event featured a performance by San Diego singer J. Pierre and a keynote address from B.A. Parker, the co-host of NPR's Code Switch.
President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown and other civil rights concerns are bringing new people into activist movements. Richmond said that's to be expected, but affecting change is a long-term commitment.
"The reality is we're in a time where more and more people are feeling like they're not immune or protected or privileged," she said. "At the same time, it's ongoing — you can't just wait for things to be really bad to try and make things better."
The theme for this year's event was "Choose Courage."
Richmond said now, almost 60 years since Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, his lessons still resonate. The most resonant, she said, differ depending on who one asks.
"For me, his key message is love for humanity and when he talks about a beloved community, it's because he was doing work for people that he genuinely cared about," she said. "And it wasn't any one population or demographic group — I think that we are in a place where more people need to understand how connected we all are."
