Community workshop celebrates King legacy

YOUNGSTOWN

A smile brightened Micah Smith’s face when she thought about the impact Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had on her life.

“Martin Luther King taught me how to be nonviolent and choose love instead of hate,” the Youngstown Early College senior explained, adding that such a transformation has allowed her to still love those who may persecute her.

A desire to celebrate the life and legacy of the iconic civil-rights leader, minister and humanitarian brought Smith to Monday’s 32nd annual Community Workshop Celebrating the Life & Legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. event at First Presbyterian Church, 201 Wick Ave., on the North Side.

Hosting the three-hour gathering, themed “Remembering What is Civil, Doing What is Right,” was the Martin Luther King Jr. Planning Committee of Mahoning County. The Rev. William Blake, director of Youngstown State University’s Office of Student Diversity, was moderator.

Alicia Reed, an Early College student, said she feels King’s legacy has left an imprint on the nonviolent protesters who demonstrated against the killing of black men in Ferguson, Mo., and New York City.

“He has made me more involved in the community,” added Serena Chatman, a YSU political-science major who hopes to be an Ohio state senator.

Chatman, Reed and Smith also have been on Sojourn to the Past, a 10-day, five-state bus trip through the Deep South in which high-school students and adults learn about the civil-rights movement of the 1950s and ‘60s and apply those lessons to their lives.

Making up the workshop’s panel were Barbara Ewing, the Youngstown Business Incubator’s chief operating officer; Jaladah Aslam, the King committee’s co-convener; Holly Welch, Choffin Career & Technical Center’s curriculum supervisor; and Jerome Justice, an entrepreneur who also owns Villa Shoe Store in Liberty Township.

Many regions with a single, dominant industry tend to have fewer entrepreneurial opportunities, noted Ewing, who added that it’s important to support “nuts-and-bolts” start-up businesses in the Mahoning Valley.

Such ventures often contribute to their areas’ economic vitality, make it easier for some people to find jobs and bring added hope and a greater ability to correct certain social ills, she continued.

The most effective social-justice tool for changing unfair laws is the ballot, said Aslam, who called the low voter turnout for recent midterm elections “beyond pathetic.”

“We can protest police brutality, yet we won’t obtain an absentee ballot,” Aslam added, noting that voter turnout was high, however, among blacks for the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections.