Organizers of the 24th annual celebration of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday Monday are adding their voices to the Occupy Wall Street movement’s cry for economic justice.
A "teach-in" and rally will be held at 7:45 a.m. Monday at Magic Island prior to the 9 a.m. parade, said Marsha Joyner, president emeritus of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Coalition-Hawaii. Her group is holding several events honoring the civil rights leader and 1964 Nobel Peace Prize winner over four days.
It was at the urging of the Rev. Bob Nakata, a member of the Interfaith Alliance Hawaii, that the religious group planned the rally to speak against the disparity of wealth, Joyner said. Interfaith Alliance members, along with other church and social justice groups, will also march in the parade through Waikiki to Kapiolani Park, she added.
Alliance President John Heidel said, "Our presence needs to be seen, and our voices need to be heard. The planners of the parade want to make a statement about the economic disparity that is being experienced by too many Americans. The Occupy movement has expanded our awareness of the magnitude of this concern, and the time is right to express our moral outrage against greed and our support for economic justice."
Joyner said King’s birthday is an opportune time for the rally because "this is a moral issue. We are more cognizant of the ever-widening gulf between the top 1 percent and the rest of us — the many! We are the many! Martin Luther King represented the many — the religious, the civil rights movement, the poor, labor.
"We have asked people of all faiths to join us. We forget that Martin Luther King first and foremost was a minister. In his ‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail,’ he calls on religious leaders to take a stand."
While jailed in 1963 for leading nonviolent protests against racial segregation in Alabama, King wrote a letter published in a newspaper, which galvanized the civil rights movement, urging clergy to do more in fighting unjust laws.
Joyner said that "we always send a special invitation to the refuse workers" to join the march, in remembrance of the sanitation workers strike King was supporting when he was assassinated in 1968 in Memphis, Tenn.
Nakata, pastor of Kahaluu United Methodist Church, said there were many aspects to King’s work and that "he was very much a labor leader," leading Poor People’s Campaign marches against unfair working conditions. King also protested against the Vietnam War, Nakata said.
King often confronted the government and called it unjust in the same way prophets of the Old Testament were responsible for calling out rulers of the people when they became abusive, Nakata said. Part of a pastor’s role today is to be a prophet or shepherd to lead their people, he added.
"I feel Martin Luther King understood himself to be a prophet. He said: I have been to the mountaintop and I have seen the Promised Land — I’ve seen what the kingdom of God should look like. We are falling short of the promise. He called people of faith to speak up and ask for justice for God’s people," Nakata said.
Religious leaders today have to speak against economic injustice and "the overwhelming power of money in our political system," he said. Nakata said he is appalled at the 2010 landmark federal court decision that allows corporations and unions to contribute unlimited amounts of money to super PACs (political action committees).
"Government is supposed to be of the people, by the people and for the people, but clearly it is government of, by and for the corporate interests," Nakata added.
"King is one of my heroes. He had the courage to speak out and knew the risks. In the Bible many, many prophets got killed — look at what happened to Jesus — because what they have to say is not popular," Nakata said.
"They (prophets and pastors) are the watchmen on the wall. If he says nothing, then it’s his responsibility that the people are oppressed or destroyed," he added.
