City Year Washington DC: A Year in the Life

A few weeks ago on Monday November 13, here in DC we celebrated the groundbreaking of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial. WOW! What a fantastic ceremony! With a list of speakers overshadowed by no other event: Oprah, President Bush, President Clinton, Barrack Obama, Maya Angelou, Tavis Smiley, Martin Luther King’s children, Jesse Jackson, Dorothy Height, and the list just keeps on going. We are in the fortunate position here in DC to have been offered many volunteer slots to help the day run smoothly. Even though we had to begin the day at 6am, (which required some corps members to sleep at the office because public transportation at that time of the morning is less readily available) it was all worth it. The best part wasn’t the proximity to these notable individuals but hearing their words of respect for the memorial and the movement it honors. Martin Luther King Jr.’s daughter awakened everyone to the fact that the memorial is not a reminder of problems that once were and have since been overcome, but instead a reminder of the problems that still plague us and today are too often overlooked. This is the first memorial around the National Mall that doesn’t pay tribute to a past president or war. Instead of memorializing a man who was elected to office to make changes in our country from the top down, it memorializes a man who brought people together to take a stand against injustice and make changes together from the bottom up. It does not memorialize a war that once happened long ago and far away but a struggle that continues daily right here in every corner of our country. City Year’s foundation revolves around many great leaders of the past and present: Mother Teresa, Ghandi, Caesar Chavez, Malcolm X, Anne Frank, and Nelson Mandela to name a few. Each of their legacies of idealistic actions guides our service but none more than does the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. Oprah referenced King’s words that “Everyone can be great because anybody can serve.” We use this quote a lot at City Year, but hearing Oprah say it made me think again deeply about what it actually means and how true it is. King’s ideal of a Beloved Community involved people coming together from all backgrounds in the common action of service to learn that we are all just people and that, as we often say, “the bonds of our common humanity are stronger than what often tears us apart.”
To be most honest, this is the reason I came back to City Year for a second year. In light of all the services City Year provides it does nothing better than break down the usual barriers between young people from vastly different experiences. Every City Year site across the country has an MLK space in their office. Here in DC, in addition to housing most of the corps members’ office work, the MLK space is also where we have our monthly community meetings. At a community meeting I can look around the circle and see young people from all over the country and DC, those who grew up in private school, foster homes, all black neighborhoods, all white neighborhoods, urban areas, rural areas, college grads, high school grads, GED-certified individuals, homosexuals, heterosexuals, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Agnostics, Atheists, athletes, intellectuals ALL sitting together in the MLK space with their common desire to serve. In what other work environment could I get that experience? It took the dreams and actions of MLK and thousands of people in the movement he represents to make this a reality. Our daily actions are tributes to them and continue the work they started so that one day we could possibly consider our whole country an “MLK space.” I like the thought of that.