In considering MLK Day 2024’s theme, the MLK Day Planning Committee reflected on the current state of DEI efforts at Concordia, recent and past student demonstrations for racial and economic justice, and MLK’s personal reflections, including “Letter from Birmingham Jail” and “Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos and Community.” We hope you will join us in ensuring MLK 2024 encourages our campus to be “Communities in Action, Empowering the Dream.”

With a yearlong absence of a chief diversity officer, a transition of a president, and increasing staff turnover, many in our Concordia community were left to wonder, who is responsible for diversity, equity, and inclusion? How will Concordia “be responsibly engaged” as we seek our own excellence through diversity? What standards and values around belonging, inclusion, equity, and justice empower and guide our community? For many, these questions and the violent realities facing our most marginalized students seem overwhelming to grapple with, and we make the mistake of waiting for the “expert” or marginalized students to arrive to tell us what to think and do. During such a period of transition, it can be easy to forget that these questions and conversations are not new and not the responsibility of only a few positions and populations to address; these questions and sentiments are echoes from Cobbers who have been advocating for racial and economic justice on campus and beyond since our inception (1970s, We Wear Beanies Too, Free Palestine).

While reflecting on current campus challenges to belonging and equity and demands from recent and past campus demonstrations for racial justice, the MLK Planning Committee was reminded of MLK’s (1963). In this letter, MLK rejects the calls for patience on racial justice efforts and reflects on the white moderate, stating: 

"I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, 'I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action'; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time; and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a 'more convenient season.' Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress."  

To assist our campus in thinking through how they might engage in action to realize MLK’s dream (locally and globally), we are inspired by the following:

• , which calls us to create a beloved community by asking three critical questions: (1) Who must we be? (2) What must we do? (3) What are we to accomplish? 
• Funmilola Fagbamila’s , a show that “calls into question the partisanship, groupthink and absence of nuance that often inform modern political debate.”
• Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?” gives reflections on hope, the Civil Rights Movement, and the future of America. It was his fourth and final book published before his assassination in 1968. We were particularly inspired by the following quotes:
  • “In the days ahead we must not consider it unpatriotic to raise certain basic questions about our national character.” 
  • “A final victory is an accumulation of many short-term encounters. To lightly dismiss a success because it does not usher in a complete order of justice is to fail to comprehend the process of full victory. It underestimates the value of confrontation and dissolves the confidence born of partial victory by which new efforts are powered.” 
  • “Let us be those creative dissenters who will call our beloved nation to a higher destiny, to a new plateau of compassion, to a more noble expression of humanness.” 

We need our campus community to be courageous, compassionate, and committed in our efforts to learn, reflect, and take action to realize MLK’s dream of our country and communities. We hope you will join us in ensuring our campus commits to being “Communities in Action, Empowering the Dream” for MLK 2024 and beyond.