Journal of Educational Controversy to Take Part in MLK Activities

The Journal of Educational Controversy will be participating in the Martin Luther King, Jr. Human Rights Conference here in Bellingham, Washington. The conference is an annual event sponsored by the Whatcom Human Rights Task Force that is now part of the Whatcom Peace and Justice Center. It will take place at the Whatcom Community College on Saturday, January 19, 2013. The theme of the conference this year is: “Gaining a Voice in a Democracy: Tools for Empowerment.” Our session will complicate the vision of the American school as an institution for gaining a voice in our democracy by looking at the contradictions posed by our upcoming issue on the school-to-prison pipeline. The session will be facilitated by editor, Lorraine Kasprisin, and author, Maria Timmons Flores. Professor Flores will discuss her paper, “A DREAM Deported: What Undocumented American Youth Need their Schools to Understand.” A section on the “School-to-Deportation Pipeline” will supplement articles on the “School-to-Prison Pipeline” in the issue. Our session will provide the political and legal context of the problems, causes and possible solutions, along with suggestions on what schools can do. Young students will join us to talk about their lived experiences, the messages they hear, and the barriers and bridges that drive them one way or another.


Other events honoring the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. in Bellingham include:

A free breakfast at Bellingham High School at 10 a.m.; Rosalinda Guillen, director of Community to Community Development, will be the featured speaker on Jan 21.

Poverty Action March begins at 11 am at Bellingham High School on Jan. 21. (The march is inspired by the 1968 Poor People’s March on Washington D.C. that was being planned by Dr. King and others, only months before his assassination, to bring attention to economic and social disparities for Americans living in poverty.)

Service projects include a Read-In at Village Books, painting at the Boys and Girls Club and volunteering to support the elderly through the Chore Program.

Tangled Web Conference on Race, Immigration, Poverty and Prisons; Western Washington University, Jan. 17-18.

Martin Luther King Conference, Whatcom Community College, Jan. 19.

Readers can read an excellent article, “Martin Luther King’s Legacy: Gaining a Voice in Democracy” by Victor Nolet, Professor at Western Washington University and member of the Whatcom Human Rights Task Force Planning Committee at the website of the Bellingham Herald.

Providing a context for this national day of remembrance, Professor Nolet writes:

Imagine a year in which you are invited to the White House to meet with a sitting president, your daughter is born, you are arrested and placed in solitary confinement, you deliver a historic and nationally televised speech, and you are named person of the year by Time Magazine. That was Martin Luther King’s year in 1963! In 1963, at the age of just 34, Martin Luther King was considered by many to be the moral leader of the Civil Rights movement. He was an ordained clergyman, a gifted orator, a labor activist, and an accomplished scholar with a doctorate from Boston University. He also was considered by many to be a revolutionary, a radical, and according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, an enemy of the United States. By all accounts, Martin Luther King was a complicated and controversial figure.

To read the entire article, go to: http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2013/01/13/2824796/mlk-legacy-gaining-a-voice-in.html