Dear Group,
I urge you to click on the wikipedia entry, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and read. If you imagine establishing a holiday to celebrate Martin Luther King’s birthday was a slam-dunk (as I had rather naively imagined), the article is a must read. President Reagan signed the bill to make MLK Day a federal holiday in 1983, after a petition in favor of the holiday was submitted to Congress with six million signatures. The petition was identified by the magazine The Nation as “the largest petition in favor of an issue in U.S. history.” There were several prominent naysayers, including Senators Jesse Helms (R-NC) and John Porter East (R-NC). Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) on the floor of the Senate literally stomped on the 300 page document Helms submitted, calling it “a packet of filth.”
There is a lesson here about what it takes to get legislation passed…
Get out and honor the day. (See the box above for details.)
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry