“Everyone can be great, because everyone can serve.”
This past Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, buildOn students from all six US regions participated in a day of service to honor these wise words spoken by Dr. King, and show their communities just how great they are.
Mikias Wondyfraw, a senior at International Studies Academy in San Francisco, CA, is involved with buildOn programming at his high school, and hopes to inspire others to take action in their own community. He has traveled to Nicaragua with buildOn to help construct a schoolhouse, and donated countless hours of service in San Francisco.
With a keen understanding of service and its implications, Mikias wrote and delivered a speech reflecting upon Dr. King’s dedication to compassion and social justice, as he asks his peers to join him in overcoming all, with love.
By Mikias Wondyfraw
Senior
International Studies Academy (ISA)
San Francisco, CA
The love and courage that Dr. King displayed throughout his life serve as extraordinary models for addressing the social problems we face in our communities today. As an African American in the 1960s, King encountered racism first hand. His people had been held down by society for so long that many of them had lost hope of ever gaining equality. Fear held people back from fighting for change. King’s value of love and his confidence in the promise of humanity led him to overcome that fear. Love gave him the courage to dedicate his life to achieving equality for all Americans. Indeed, courage is a critical part of any social movement. Without it, the civil rights movement could not have been successful. Courage brings us hope and hope brings us the energy we need to organize around social change.
Like King, we need to have the courage to take a stand for positive change in our communities. The problems Dr.King fought for 40 years ago are still relevant. There is still inequality. There is still hunger. There is still homelessness. There is still violence. There is still war. We can not solve these problems without mobilizing and organizing. In order to strengthen and better our community, we have to put our self-interest aside; work to find common ground that represents the whole community. We must support each other as a community and offer love and respect.
Dr. King valued service. He served those around him and people in communities throughout the world. King definitely " thought globally and acted locally". In fact, he once said “An injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”. We have to value service projects in our community and recognize that we are part of a greater world. Our service stems from our love for humanity. Dr. Cornel West once said “You can't lead the people if you don't love the people. You can't save the people if you don't serve the people". Love and service will strengthen our communities. We need to love others, and we need to serve others. This means to march with the people, listen to everyone's ideas, empower others, and stand together. Dr.King's love of others led him to serve people, and march with them. There should not be any separation in our love of others.
So let us have the courage to spread our love in our communities. We can not be oppressed by our own fear. If we have fear to express our feelings, we will not stand up to fight for injustice or mistreatment. Fear leads us to be silent about problems. Overtime this fear will defeat us inside, so we will be fearful all the time. That is why we need to organize on issue that we think are important to the well being of our community. So it is not going to be one voice , but a group of people speaking out on the problem. Fear can be defeated by love. But, we can not allow love to be defeated by fear because our ideas and voices will be omitted, and create violence. We need more love and courage in our community, and the violence can be defeated by compassion.