MLK Day celebration addresses topic of injustice

“Injustice Anywhere Is a Threat to Justice Everywhere” was the theme of the 36th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration on Monday, Jan. 20, at the Jack Reardon Convention Center, 5th and Minnesota Avenue, Kansas City, Kansas.

The theme was a quotation from a letter from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Several elected officials were in attendance, including Kansas Lt. Gov. Lynn Rogers, U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids, D-3rd Dist., Kansas City, Kansas, Mayor-CEO David Alvey and many other elected officials in Wyandotte County. U.S. Rep. Roger Marshall, R-1st Dist., a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, also attended.

Snow was falling and temperatures were very cold on Monday morning during the event in Kansas City, Kansas.

“None of us have the right to stay in our seats when there’s problems to be addressed. None of us has the right to stand by and say it’s someone else’s problem. All of us are called to address the problem,” said the keynote speaker, Monsignor Stuart W. Swetland, president of Donnelly College.

Monsignor Swetland, who is a Rhodes Scholar and teaches a college course on the topic, in his speech quoted from Dr. King’s letter from the Birmingham jail.

“I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham,” he quoted from Dr. King’s letter. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny, whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.”

What started with the letter reverberates through history, Monsignor Swetland said. To address injustice, people need to begin with themselves, he said.

“How many of the world’s problems could be solved if we truly recognized each and every person as a brother or sister?” he asked.

He added that the community has to put an end to economic injustice if it is going to grow and prosper together. The redlining in the past has left the community with a steep hill to climb, he said.

“We owe reparations, we owe repentance, we owe reform and we owe rebuilding up those areas that were deliberately set aside, not having access to the resources that God intended them to have,” he said. “Now is the time for us to address that injustice.”

No human person is a burden, he said, and no person is ever illegal. Monsignor Swetland also discussed other types of injustice, including environmental injustice and the unjust disparities in health care.

“We have for too long waited for someone else to begin fixing our problems,” he said. He added that people can fix their problems with God’s help. “Together, we can overcome. We know that, but we have to put aside the partisan divisions that keep us at our worst, not our best. We have to say, where can we work together.”

The problems are immense, he said, but “there’s great freedom in knowing we can’t do everything,” he said. “Once we recognize that truth, it frees us to do something, and do it very well. The one thing we cannot do is to do nothing.”

The MLK Mass Choir, under the direction of Ruby Kirkwood, performed selections at the celebration.

Taylor Sims, Piper High School, performed “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”

One highlight of the program was the awarding of educational scholarships. Wyandotte County District Attorney Mark Dupree announced new scholarship awards.