Calls for Peace and Justice Mark Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday

Calls for unity and calls for ceasefire in Gaza marked events held on Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday weekend in Connecticut.

“2024 is a pivotal year. We can be divided and conquered, or we can come together with unity in action and win more than ever before,“ says the call to the annual gathering of New Haven Rising, themed Unity in Action, to be held on Monday, January 15 at Trinity Temple,. 285 Dixwell Ave. in New Haven at 6 pm.

Upholding King's legacy, the event publicity highlights his remarks to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) on March 30, 1967:

“The evils of capitalism are as real as the evils of militarism and racism,” said King. “The problems of racial injustice and economic injustice cannot be solved without a radical redistribution of political and economic power."

More specifically, King warmed, "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."

That message linking the peace and civil rights movements was central to King's courageous speech“Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence” delivered at Riverside Church in New York on April 4, 1967.

The relevance of that message to the growing movement for ceasefire was emphasized at an annual community reading of the speech on Friday January 12 hosted by the Greater New Haven Peace Council along with the City of New Haven Peace Commission, Veterans for Peace and the Connecticut Peace and Solidarity Committee. 

 

Held in the atrium of New Haven City Hall, the reading was dedicated to lifelong peace and justice leader Al Marder who passed away at 101 in December. His final message was a call to demand a ceasefire in Gaza to stop the slaughter as over 20,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children have been killed by US-funded Israeli bombs since the October 7 attack by Hamas killed 1,200 in Israel.

 

Participants signed postcards to Congress calling for support of an immediate and lasting ceasefire and uninterrupted humanitarian aid to Gaza. They also signed a petition to the New Haven Board of Alders supporting a resolution for ceasefire as other municipalities have done. On January 2 the Bridgeport City Council became the first in Connecticut to pass a ceasefire resolution.