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Each year, I wait eagerly for the winter holidays to pass, knowing that the third Monday in January will soon bring a message of service, covering up much of the smog of materialism left by Santa and the shopping sprees he inspires.
Dr. King’s holiday is a sacred day on my calendar, breathing a sense of hope to our country, wherever we may find ourselves. Throughout this year, we will surely focus on the economic plight of our country, but this holiday reminds us that our wealth as a nation rests primarily in our collective ability to work for a just, caring, humanistic, equitable society. It is time to look critically, and act accordingly, at the values our current society espouses; as Dr. King warned, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.”
This holiday is about more than the preacher from Georgia who helped a nation to dream of something better; today we remember the ideals that he and some many others worked, struggled and sacrificed toward, today and in times past. After speaking to citizens in Selma, Ala. — the center of the voting-rights struggle and location of the infamous 1965 “Bloody Sunday” attack by police on peaceful protesters — I realized quickly that the Civil Rights Movement was more about the mothers and ministers of small towns who stood up to racism and injustices, rather than the leaders on whom the cameras focused.
One particularly forgotten group in the groundswell of activism for civil rights is our youth. In Selma, for example, there were young people in elementary and middle school marching for the right to vote, even though they were years away from being of voting age. One of my college mentors, Freeman Hrabowski, now the president of the University of Maryland Baltimore County, was just up the road in Birmingham, where thousands of youth marched for the end of a social system founded on segregation and racism, flooding the local jails. Dr. Hrabowski, then a 14-year-old, remembers being pulled aside by Dr. King in the jail and told to protect the younger children from harm.
From the days of old in the Deep South, I am brought to the Native American Community Academy here in southeast Albuquerque as the 2009 holiday approaches.
It was here I heard about a group of middle school youth that wanted to make a difference at their school through graffiti art. Tired of the vandalism in their school’s bathroom, six young men took it upon themselves to come up with a plan for a graffiti mural that they would paint on the bathroom wall.
They told their teachers and mentors about their vision and received a youth project grant to fund their project. They state in their application, “This was mainly brought together to stop the vandalism, but as the project excelled it brought out the expression and determination of our NACA youth.”
And in the spirit of the holiday, they went a step further, dreaming about what could be: “Our team wants the youth to realize that instead of destroying our property, they could help the community.”
As in the days where the issues were voting rights and segregation, young people are working to make a difference on the issues of today, right here in Albuquerque. Gang violence, high school attrition, sustainable agriculture, smoking, teen pregnancy and re-invigoration of traditional cultures and languages are just a few of the issues in which local youth are leading actively working on change. There are even youth from the Laguna Pueblo who are working on legislation for increased funding of mental health in Indigenous communities. I hope to see that pass during the legislative session that begins Tuesday.
Amid the current distractions that Wall Street and the Middle East provide, with very little positive news from either, it is tempting to forget the assets, the resources, and the wealth of our communidades in New Mexico, beginning with our youth.
I urge my fellow New Mexicans to use the holiday weekend to rejuvenate and re-commit ourselves to the humble service of those around us, beginning within our homes and families.
Put down the remote and pick up a shovel, a paint can, a book, a stethoscope, a gavel or whatever implement you choose to improve the lives of those around you.
As I watched the NACA youth draw out the letters “R-E-S-P-E-C-T” large enough to cover the entire bathroom wall, I could hear the words of Dr. King echoing: “Life’s most urgent question is: what are you doing for others?”
Let’s get to work!
Anthony Fleg is a family medicine physician in the University of New Mexico Department of Family and Community Medicine. He is interested in hearing your thoughts about newsworthy items affecting health and health care in the state of New Mexico. He can be reached at afleg@salud.unm.edu.
