Dear Moreno Valley Residents,
This week we marked what would have been the 92nd birthday of one of America’s greatest leaders, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. From 1955’s boycott of the Montgomery, Alabama, city bus service to his triumphant – and tragically prophetic – “I’ve been to the mountaintop” speech on April 3, 1968, and his murder the very next evening, he made tremendous progress toward racial justice in America.
What we admire and honor about Dr. King is not only that progress but the way in which he and others achieved it: through non-violent protest. They didn’t make threats or damage property or hurt anyone. They made their justifiable grievances clear and understandable, and then worked to build a coalition of supporters, which eventually included the president and a majority in congress, and many non-black citizens, north and south. And though the protesters often met with violence along the way, they did not return it, instead letting the power of their non-violence convey the seriousness of their cause.
Dr. King’s commitment to non-violence in pursuit of political change is something all Americans should admire and honor, and that we all should choose to emulate today.
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