Close to 1,500 people braved Friday’s early morning rain to join the Jackie Robinson Family YMCA in celebrating the life and mission of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at a 6 a.m. breakfast that has been a San Diego tradition for more than three decades.
To a soundtrack including Curtis Mayfield’s “Move On Up,” attendees representing organizations including the police department, the postal service, San Diego State University and the San Diego chapter of the Buffalo Soldiers were encouraged to keep King’s dream of equality, justice, freedom and peace alive. Several speakers said that dream had come under attack in the past year.
“Martin Luther King sets an example that no matter how young you are and no matter how old you are, there is still so much that needs to be done,” said Dee Sanford, who serves on the YMCA board and has chaired the breakfast event for almost two decades. “If not us, who?”
This year, the event’s organizers found inspiration in a quote from an essay written by King in 1957.
“We have before us the glorious opportunity to inject a new dimension of love into the veins of our civilization,” King wrote. “And the end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the beloved community.”
The keynote speaker, Robert Ross, a former pediatrician who is president and CEO of The California Endowment, a private health foundation, warned of the danger of false narratives framing choices and public policy.
He talked about what he witnessed during the crack cocaine epidemic, and the country’s response to it.
“We criminalized hopelessness and addiction,” Ross said. “It wasn’t a prevention narrative. It was a punishment narrative.
“We can’t arrest our way into community safety,” he added.
Now, he said, the U.S. is facing another narrative problem, a narrative of exclusion. He said that while California “flirted” with that narrative in the past, its progressive agenda has put it 10 to 20 years ahead of the rest of the country.
“We will not be able to look at Washington, D.C., to show us the way to achieve Martin Luther King’s dream,” Ross said. “We’ll have to plot that path ourselves.”
He also criticized the narrative of police shootings that have dominated the media in recent years, calling it a “narrative of false choice.”
“Do black lives matter or do blue lives matter?” he said. “The answer to that question is yes, not A or B.”
He said other systems, such as education and mental health, were failing to support youth of color, and those institutions should be held accountable as well.
“Sure, let’s make sure we hold our police departments accountable, and let’s make sure we do the work of building community and police trust, but we’ve got to go upstream, folks,” he said. “Our outrage around the fact that our black and brown boys in particular are not reading at [grade level] should be front page news.”
He said framing choices around a narrative of inclusion, prevention and support would follow the path of King’s dream of equality and opportunity for all.
The Jackie Robinson Family YMCA held its first breakfast in 1986, the first year King’s birthday was celebrated as a federal holiday.
King was assassinated in 1968, and a movement began to make his birthday a national holiday. Stevie Wonder recorded his iconic “Happy Birthday” song as part of that push.
Michael Brunker, executive director at the southeastern San Diego facility, said that San Diego should be proud of its history for jumping on board with the celebration so quickly. He said that the event has grown from between 300 and 400 people in the YMCA’s gymnasium to its current production at the Town and Country Hotel Convention Center in Mission Valley.
The YMCA honored two men with its Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Human Dignity award: Richard Butcher, a physician who focused his work on helping the community of southeast San Diego, and Jeffrey Harper-Harris, who founded a basketball outreach program called the San Diego Cougars.
Harris, who also coaches basketball at Lincoln High School, said that when he moved to San Diego at 16 from Ohio to live with his grandmother, she talked often of King.
“My parents and grandmother made sure I understood who came before me,” Harris said. “I never thought I would be mentioned in the same sentence as Martin Luther King Jr.”
The event kicked off a weekend of celebrations for the civil rights leader, including a parade on Sunday afternoon. The federal holiday will be observed on Monday.
King was born Jan. 15, 1929, in Atlanta.
kate.morrissey@sduniontribune.com, @bgirledukate
