MLK jr. day

Today, is MLK Day, the national holiday on which the US commemorate one of their great acronyms, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., born January 15, 1929. Public institutions are closed, as are universities and schools. MLK day is a day of service, of volunteer projects. In DC alone, there are close to 100 initiatives, varying from discussions about race equality to cleaning up public spaces. A friend of my brother's knew about this and suggested doing our bit.
So this morning we cycled to JO Wilson Elementary School on K Street Northeast (home of the JO Wilson Cardinals) to help Ms. Wheeler, Ms. Smith and colleagues clearing their classrooms of broken or useless equipment, books, furniture etc. Ms. Wheeler told the 30 to 40 volunteers who had shown up with us that the school was preparing for a major renovation due in May this year. It was time to get rid of all the surplus material. In the process of throwing things out, we should not let ourselves be held back by sentimentality, she told us, as this was likely the reason that all this stuff was still there. The next three hours we were busy carrying all things down into the commons area and sorting them out. On the upper floors Ms. Fudge had positioned herself strategically to oversee the whole floor from an intersection of corridors, on ground level in the commons area, Ms. Smith held everything comfortably under control and gave directions where to put everything. If I asked what to do next, she always had a command ready, keeping all volunteers satisfied.
I cane across some interesting stuff. There was text book on "the American way of life", apparently something that doesn't come naturally and has to be taught. And above the class rooms the name of the room and of the teacher were shown in French, the proof of a passionate French teacher. Nothing wrong with it, but it puzzled me why elementary school kids in the US should be taught French? Apparently MLK had been a theme in class, too, because on the walls there were several creations featuring the historic icon.
Around noon Ms. Wheeler got nervous, as the 140 (!) volunteers she expected for the second shift - for moving a hall full of trash onto the parking lot for shipment or disposal - didn't show up. When we were taking a break in the conference room, loading up for the second wave to stand in for the missing army of volunteers, red-shirted consultants from Accenture were starting to drop in, saving the day for Ms. Wheeler. She'd be fine. We dismissed ourselves, said good bye to Ms. Fudge c.s. and agreed that we hadn't come in vain.

And now the commemoration part: one of the greatest speeches in history, delivered August 28, 1963, on the steps of the monument in which two more historical speeches, by Lincoln, are engraved, and which has become my favorite place in Washington, DC. It has done a lot of good, but today, 46 years later, 147 years after Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, still, everyday, on the streets of DC and in the confrontation with my own prejudices, there is inescapable evidence that the "Dream" dreamt more than 46 years ago has not fully come true yet.