MLK event focuses on courage, change

By Tim Farley

Change is needed in American society, and it must happen now, former state lawmaker Angela Monson said during her speech Monday at the 15th annual Martin Luther King, Jr., prayer breakfast in Midwest City.

The event drew hundreds of people to the Sheraton Hotel’s Reed Conference Center as Monson and two other featured speakers talked about courage in the face of adversity.

In celebrating King and his drive for equality and civil rights for all Americans, Monson said, “I feel a sense of urgency to act, to do something right now and to make the change we see in front of us become a reality. We are an empowered people whether you know it or not. We have the power to make change whether in education, the justice system, healthcare, in our families, communities or at the state and national levels.”

Monson urged each audience member to become involved in their communities and promote positive change.

“There is a collective sense of responsibility that will bring us all together,” she said. “It must be done today. Tomorrow may not give us the opportunity. We need to act now, not as if our lives depend on it, but the lives of everyone who will come after us.”

Monson currently works as associate provost for community partnerships and health policy at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center in Oklahoma City. She also is an adjunct associate professor in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine.

Youth issues

Oklahoma City Police Lt. Paco Balderamma talked to the audience about helping young people involved in drugs, gangs and alcohol change their lives. Balderamma supervises the department’s truancy unit and the FACT program, which are proactive police approaches on reducing juvenile crime.

Balderamma said 85 percent of the youngsters he deals with do not have a male role model in the home, and 47 per cent of those children have no home at all.

In addition, 8,100 cases of child abuse and neglect were reported in Oklahoma last year, he said.

“Why does our own society hurt its children,” Balderamma asked. “We have social services, the Department of Human Services and the police department. But, government was never designed to love. The breakdown of the family unit is one of the biggest problems in society today. Less than 1 percent of all the kids who come through my program have a stable family life with a mother and father.”

In keeping with the event’s courage theme, Balderamma said he sees heroic and courageous actions in people every day.

“You have the grandmother who raises her grandchild by herself. You have the soldier who comes home from a war and mentors at-risk kids, or you have the single mom who works two jobs and still has time at night to help her children with their homework,” he said.

Unity

Midwest City High School graduate and current University of Oklahoma student Rodney Farrow spoke about solving problems to “bring forth unity.”

“We cannot be scared to show courage in the face of adversity. My goal is to be a scientist. I want to make life easier and better for people. Seeing all the negatives in the world makes me want to bring about the positives,” he said.

The three features speakers and Midwest City Mayor Jack Fry made references to King’s dream and his infamous “I Have a Dream” speech, which was made Aug. 28, 1963, during the historic March on Washington.

King said at the time, “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.’ I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day, even in the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

tfarley@eastwordnews.com

See related photos, Pages 17-18