“Everyone can be great because everyone can serve … You only need a heart full of grace, a soul created by love.”
When Reverend Martin Luther King Jr He said those words from the pulpit of Ebenezer Baptist Church on February 4, 1968, he had seen a lot in his life. The racist bile of Jim Crow. Bus boycotts, protests and freedom trips. The inside of a Birmingham jail cell. Selma’s beatings followed by a glorious bridge crossing. The terror of segregation equaled by the beauty of a march in Washington.
And in just two months, the life of this great American healer would be cut off by the bullet of a murderer, by a violent demonstration of millennial hatred.
The inability and unwillingness of too many in our country to live up to the meaning of our creed could have weakened anyone’s faith. But not Dr. King’s. He had an answer: Grace. Love. Greatness embodied by service.
Each year, we commemorate the anniversary of his birth following the example of his call: organizing a National Day of Service, where communities come together to offer meals to the hungry, a shelter and help for the homeless, a helping hand to the poor, the oppressed, the marginalized, students and people struggling with mental health challenges. We show those who have too often been neglected that we see them, we listen to them and their dignity is linked to ours.
Perhaps at no other moment in recent memory have we needed to summon that spirit more than now. This year’s Day of Service comes at a time of hope and horror. Two days before the inauguration of a new president and vice president, ready to bring empathy and healing to our nation. However, also in the midst of an unprecedented pandemic that has taken too much away from many of us, our health, our wages, our sense of security, and the lives of our loved ones.
As it was for Dr. King, service continues to be the most powerful medicine in our society.
The government’s action to defeat COVID- 19 is vital, and I have no doubt that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will bring the leadership we need at the federal level. But probably most essential of all is what we do to help out in our own community. How we step forward. How, Together, We Serve.
Anyone can find an opportunity to help wherever they are, and do it in a safe way. They can create cards for patients recovering from illness, write letters to residents in nursing homes, read to students, fill a virtual shopping cart for a military family. They can attend social distancing activities such as making “no-contact” food donations or joining a group for a neighborhood clean-up.
Here in LA, people can help Unique Markets create food packages for frontline doctors and nurses and health service personnel. Or join LA Works in volunteer projects to promote racial equity. Or help Project Angel Food prepare healthy meals for vulnerable families. Or choose from a long list of possibilities at https://bideninaugural.org/day-of-service/, because in our city, service is in our DNA, and we know that the most important part of this is simply saying present.
And we have to remember something that Dr. King knew very well, that service is not a one-day effort, but a lifelong commitment and a national cause. So just like the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps and the Teacher Corps, it’s time for a CARES Corps: a coalition of local governments and workers, city and county health departments, medical professionals, businesses and youth, all backed by federal funds, created to stop COVID – 19 now and rebuild our economy better than ever.
A Corps of CARES would translate the spirit of Service Day in a year-round campaign, equipping us with the tools to expand testing and vaccine distribution; avoid drastic reductions in services in our cities, counties and states; and equip unemployed workers with job training, more successful small businesses with loan programs, and communities with solutions tailored to their unique needs.
No matter the setting or environment, politics or the program, we have the opportunity to live up to the truest form of democracy: to participate in a cause greater than our own interests and to be woven into common threads of equity and justice.
That It is the example we can draw from the civil rights movement, the reminder that even in times of darkness we have the power to open the door to a dawn of freedom.
In May of 1964, Dr. King took that message to the historic Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles, telling a crowd of thousands that “it is now the time to make the promises of democracy come true. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children. “This,” he implored, “is the challenge of the hour.”
Martin Luther King Jr. had no illusions about the pain of his own moment. Not us. But if your diagnosis of challenges sounds familiar, it should also be your treatment: Acts of resistance. Acts of volunteerism, compassion and generosity. Acts of service.
