Local View: On MLK Day, inauguration, Duluth can rally for common good

Where do we go from here?

Jan. 20 is Martin Luther King Jr. Day and also the presidential inauguration for Donald J. Trump — two different public figures with very different perspectives and political philosophies.

Considering the first 100 days after Jan. 20, we can ask ourselves: What direction do we want to take our country and the city of Duluth? Also, do we follow the new president or one of our most famous civil-rights leaders?

In the 100 days after Trump's first inauguration four years ago, his administration pledged to eliminate gun-free zones, repealed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, removed federal regulations on energy production, and set up travel bans and restrictions on refugees and immigrants from Muslim-majority countries. Trump also announced that the U.S. was withdrawing from the Paris Agreement and that he would expand drilling and mining on public lands, as well as close offices working to end pollution while also rolling back environmental regulations on companies.

As for the upcoming inauguration, we've already heard that Trump's second administration is planning to lower taxes for corporations and the wealthy; reduce programs that serve the unemployed, poor, and homeless; return to eliminating environmental or climate initiatives from the previous administration; and undertake aggressive immigration policies toward people from third-world countries.

It appears Trump represents the distortion and denigration of what we often refer to as our better angels. At the same time, he seems to dismiss the values of kindness, community, service, and generosity. The Trump administration also seems poised to deny, if not attempt to destroy, the inherent rights and basic needs of so many underserved and vulnerable populations around the country, while at the same time foreclosing on our environment and the planet.

In “Self and Soul: A Defense of Ideals,” author Mark Edmundson wrote, “If you live life without courage, compassion, the true exercise of intellect and creation through love, then you will not feel very well. You may even get quite ill. When you cordon off the great sources of human meaning that have arisen through the centuries and say they are all illusory, then you will have contributed something to creating an ill and worried herd.”

With the upcoming presidential inauguration, we have become an ill and worried herd. There is no compassion, no courage, and no creation through love in disruptive politics and an unhealthy culture that ultimately hurts and destroys the hearts and minds of so many in our country.

We have numerous challenges to face in the coming days and years, including rising carbon-dioxide levels and more extreme climate events, greater economic inequality and more homeless on the streets, white extremism and growing racial tensions, and injustice toward the LBGTQ community and minorities.

Maybe, at this moment, we need to turn to the words and dreams of Martin Luther King Jr. In his book, “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos Or Community?,” King wrote, “Let us be the 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.”

On Jan. 20, from 6-8 p.m. in Duluth, the Loaves and Fishes community is hosting a special gathering at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, 1710 E. Superior St. Called “Coming Together For The Common Good,” it is a bringing together of people to acknowledge and celebrate how we are helping to create a more resilient, humane, and equitable world. Through reflections, poems, and music, it's vital to remember and embrace our better angels as we collectively address climate change, homelessness, racism, economic inequality, and the other challenges to our common and greater good.

Throughout his book, “This Land Is Our Land,” Jedediah Purdy talks about the struggle to build a new commonwealth in our country. He wrote, “The heroic work of building that new world must clear the space for living humbly. We need extraordinary acts to serve the most common things. It will seem less heroic, more ordinary, if it is the work of many hands, and that is the only way it will come true.”

Jan. 20 is the day we get to work being creative dissenters and start building the city and country that best exemplifies the better angels of our hopes and dreams for tomorrow.

Tone Lanzillo is a member of the Duluth/365 initiative on climate change and a regular contributor to the News Tribune Opinion page. He can be reached at risson1954@gmail.com .

MLK DAY EVENTS IN DULUTH

Community Worship — Sunday at 4 p.m. at Peace United Church of Christ, 1111 N. 11th Ave. E., with the Rev. Angela Barnes of Duluth’s St. Mark AME and music from Clinton Strother and the Central Hillside Community Gospel Choir

Community Breakfast — Monday 7-9:30 a.m. at First United Methodist Church, 230 E. Skyline Parkway, with a local program and a viewing of a program from Minneapolis .

MLK Day March — Begins at 11 a.m. Monday at the Washington Center, First Avenue West between Third Street and Fourth Street.

MLK Day Rally — Noon Monday at the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center Symphony Hall, with Major Attraktion, "That's a Rap," Loc Da Realist, Cashmere Hagbourne, Jamal King-Lunde, Rebeka Ndosi of Maji ya Chai Land Sanctuary , and excerpts from winning MLK Essay Contest entrees.

Community Gathering — “Coming Together for the Common Good” is the title of a gathering from 6-8 p.m. at St. Paul Episcopal Church, 1710 E. Superior St., sponsored by Duluth’s Loaves and Fishes community.