Tacomans celebrate MLK Day as local teacher calls for focus on King’s “radical” legacy
More than 1,000 people celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day at Tacoma’s convention center Monday, where local high school teacher Nathan Gibbs-Bowling implored the state to honor the civil rights legend by fighting poverty and increasing equity.
In a speech at Tacoma’s 30th annual celebration of King, Gibbs-Bowling said Americans should focus on the more “radical” aspects of the reverend’s legacy, such as his efforts to end the war in Vietnam and his push for higher wages.
King was assassinated in April of 1968, soon after rallying in support of black sanitation workers in Memphis for higher wages and safer working conditions.
“It is a crying shame that a nation as wealthy as this nation is … that we have not taken bigger and further steps toward the abolition of poverty,” said Gibbs-Bowling, who teaches at Lincoln High School. He was Washington state’s Teacher of the Year in 2016.
Gibbs-Bowling sketched a picture of America in which life has improved on paper for African Americans since the civil rights movement. He said the U.S. has largely met the challenge of King’s landmark “I Have a Dream” speech from 1963 “in a legal sense,” as civil rights such as voting protections were made law.
Yet he said the country needs to further improve race relations and the lives of African Americans and others through the the anti-war, anti-poverty platform that King emphasized in the late 1960s.
Gibbs-Bowling noted few Americans approved of King’s historic 1963 March on Washington, according to polling, which was before his controversial positions on the Vietnam War and other issues in 1968.
He drew a parallel to modern-day protests, including social justice demonstrations by professional football players Colin Kaepernick and Michael Bennett and those involved in the Black Lives Matter movement, which aims in part to reduce deadly shootings by police.
“If we look at the same statistics,” he said of current polling, “we’ll see the same results.”
Gibbs-Bowling offered a range of options Monday to address some of the issues he highlighted.
He called for Washington state, home to two of the world’s richest people in Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, to better help the poor. Gibbs-Bowling said he sees the effects of poverty in his classroom, where kids struggling to find a meal have a more difficult time learning.
That problem is worse in Tacoma than many places in Washington.
Nearly 60 percent of children in the Tacoma School District meet the federal requirement for free or reduced-price meals. Roughly 43 percent of students statewide meet that poverty marker.
Tacoma’s City Council has also declared the city’s homelessness crisis an emergency.
“To have the issues we have here with equity and homelessness and poverty in this city — to have families and people working full time at poverty wages — that is a failure to visualize the future that Dr. King had,” Gibbs-Bowling said.
Gibbs-Bowling was one of a slate of speakers and performers at the event, which highlighted African Americans from Tacoma, including Mayor Victoria Woodards.
Before the celebration, a group of roughly 75 people marched from Bates Technical College to the convention center to celebrate King’s holiday.
They were joined by U.S. Reps. Derek Kilmer of Gig Harbor and Denny Heck of Olympia. The districts of both Democrats include parts of Tacoma.
Gabriel Montgomery, a 44-year-old University Place resident, marched along with his 6-year-old daughter Nyla to show her that “small things like this can actually make an effect” in the face of racism and other adversity.
Montgomery said he’s concerned about a number of political trends that he believes will hurt Nyla’s future —such as laws that can increase barriers to voting and efforts to roll back federal health care regulations.
But he said he hoped to show his daughter that people can “come together and do things,” even at a local level, that can “make a difference.”
“You know Martin Luther King had some values he wanted to instill,” Mongtomery said. “He had a dream that he wanted the world to be a better place. He wanted equal rights and equal treatment for people regardless of their background. I think celebrating that can give (Nyla) some hope that when she grows up things will be better.”
Politics was one theme of the day, although neither President Donald Trump, nor his recent disparaging comments about Haiti and African nations were a focus.
Though Trump has denied making the statements, many have interpreted them as racist.
Instead, many talked about changes they would like to see in Tacoma and on a larger scale.
Gibbs-Bowling said Tacoma and the country needs to dedicate itself to “a new dream” based on three principles of equity, justice and providing a living wage.
Chief tenets of those principles are reducing the number of people in prison for nonviolent drug offenses, reducing shootings by law enforcement and decreasing poverty through higher wages.
Gibbs-Bowling also brought up the history of redlining in Tacoma, a practice in which banks would discriminate when offering loans based on race, religion or other factors.
Realtors and others also contributed to the segregation redlining encourages by steering people toward certain neighborhoods because of their race.
Gibbs-Bowling said while redlining has long been illegal, its effects still echo.
“Today, where you live will determine the quality of education you get, what access you have to resources, what access you have to parks, what accessibility you have to clean food,” he said.
Gibbs-Bowling said he hopes that will no longer be the case in the future.
“That (redlined) map is long gone in practice, but that map is still real in regards to reality,” he said. “And that’s the equity work we need to talk about today.”
By: Walker Orenstein
Source: The News Tribune