22nd Annual Detroit MLK Day Rally & March--Six Decades of Mass Struggles

For Immediate Release

Event: 22nd Annual Detroit MLK Day Rally & March

Location: St. Matthew's-St. Joseph's Episcopal Church, 8850 Woodard Avenue at Holbrook

Date & Time: Mon. Jan. 20, 2025, 12 Noon-4:00pm

Sponsor: Detroit MLK Committee

E-mail: [email protected]

URL: mlkdetroit.org

Telephone: (313) 671-3715

Theme: Six Decades of Mass Struggles Against Racism, Poverty and War

Join us on Mon. Jan. 20, 2025 for the 22nd Annual Detroit MLK Day Rally & March in honor of the actual historic legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (Jan. 15, 1929-April 4, 1968).

This year's event comes amid a heightening struggle for labor rights, civil rights and against imperialist war across the United States and the world.

A host of speakers and artists from the Detroit area will make presentations highlighting the wealth of community organizers and cultural workers in southeastern Michigan. A broad coalition of these social forces is very much needed in the coming year to meet the challenges facing the people of the city, the country and the globe.

Beginning in 2004, the Michigan Emergency Committee Against War & Injustice (MECAWI) held the first MLK Day Rally & March in downtown Detroit. The following year the Detroit MLK Committee was formed bringing in veteran civil rights and social justice activists as well as younger generations of organizers and artists.

Since 2019, the gathering has been held at the Historic St. Matthew's-St. Joseph's Episcopal Church located on Woodward Ave. at Holbrook. This venue encompasses one of the first independent African American Churches in the city of Detroit dating back to the mid-19th century.

In the early months of 1965 in Alabama the struggle to win the franchise escalated in Selma and other areas. The racist police M**der of Jimmy Lee Jackson in Marion prompted the first attempt to march from Selma to Montgomery.

Later on March 7 at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, hundreds of African Americans were beaten and gassed by local and state police. Two days later after another demonstration on March 9, Rev. James Reeb who was visiting Selma to participate in the movement was severely beaten by racists and died of his wounds soon afterward. On March 26, after the completion of the Selma-to-Montgomery March, Mrs. Viola Liuzzo of Detroit was shot to death in her car by members of the Ku Klux Klan.

Just one month before, Malcolm X (El Hajj Malik Shabazz) had been assassinated in New York City on February 21. Malcolm had maintained close ties with the city of Detroit through his work with the Nation of Islam (NOI), Muslim Mosque, Inc. (MMI), the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU), and the Freedom NOW Party. In July 1964, he had further internationalized the African American struggle by traveling to the Second Organization of African Unity (OAU) Summit in Cairo, Egypt where he submitted a resolution which mandated solidarity with the people of African descent in the U.S.

On April 17, 1965, the largest demonstrations up until that time in opposition to the U.S. war against Vietnam was held in Washington, D.C. The rally and march was organized by the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and supported by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). This manifestation set the stage for much larger demonstrations over coming years between 1965-1975 when the war ended with a victory for the Vietnamese people.

In August 1965, the Watts Rebellion erupted representing a new phase of resistance in the African American liberation struggle. The rebellion in Los Angeles prefigured an even larger social eruption in Detroit two years later in July 1967.

At present the threat in the resurgence of racism, sexism and fascist rule are upon us. This MLK Day for 2025 will renew and reinvigorate our struggle for full equality and self-determination.

We will honor the increasing militant posture of working people, a tradition in which the city was built upon. Labor unions are encouraged to participate in this event along with their rank-and-file members to symbolize the necessity of organizing and mobilizing the majority of people in order to achieve genuine democracy and economic rights.

In addition to labor activism, we will acknowledge the antiwar and peace traditions of Dr. King, who was martyred in Memphis, Tennessee during his intervention in a sanitation workers' strike in early 1968. Dr. King in the previous year, 1967, came out strongly against the U.S. genocidal war in Vietnam.

Today we are facing yet another genocidal war against the people of Gaza in Palestine. Thousands have been killed including many children utilizing bombs and other weapons supplied by the U.S. government.

Instead of ending the war in Palestine and Ukraine, the U.S. government is sending billions more for military adventures and containments from the Middle East and Eastern Europe to the Asia-Pacific and the southern border areas with the U.S.

We are rallying and marching for a cessation of racism, militarism and economic exploitation. What is needed is a society where all people are guaranteed housing, clean water, food, energy, quality education, peace and the right to equality and self-determination.

You can contribute to the costs for this event by sending a donation to the Detroit MLK Committee at 5920 Second Ave., Detroit, MI 48202.

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