The day after MLK Day, a group asks: What’s next?

Hundreds of people gathered in Seaside on Monday, Jan. 15, the day that Martin Luther King, Jr. would have turned 95. They marched down Broadway, along Fremont Boulevard and ended their route at the Oldemeyer Center for a series of musical performances and remarks. There was, of course, a look back and a spirit of celebration, as a variety of youth groups were called to the stage to share music and ritual.

But there was a lot of attention on the work left unfinished – by King, by the civil rights movement, by the generations that have come since. “Our call to action is to continue [King’s] march, towards that promised land,” Seaside Mayor Ian Oglesby said.

“We still live in a racist society,” said Mel Mason, a longtime civil rights activist. “There are a lot of issues we still have to deal with… The systems we say are broken, they are rooted in slavery. The system is working the way it’s supposed to. We need to change the system that we have.”

That can feel like an unwieldy call to action. But the day after MLK Day, on Jan. 16, a group of leaders and activists gathered at CSU Monterey Bay for the National Day of Racial Healing, a relatively new concept designed to channel that energy for what comes next and transform it into manageable, incremental steps toward progress.

“We acknowledge the wounds of the past,” said emcee Vanessa Lopez-Littleton, CSUMB’s interim dean of the College of Health Sciences and Human Services, “and commit ourselves to the ongoing work of dismantling systemic racism.”

Identifying specific, actionable components of that work – and how to do it – is the hard part.

Rosa Gonzalez echoed Mason’s message of the day before about building coalitions between Black and brown communities, as well as immigrants and indigenous people. “We know we are heading in the right direction,” she said. “And we also know we have a long way to go. It is going to take many more of us stepping up for the common good, instead of the delusion of our own self-interest.” The underlying idea is that when we all thrive, it’s good for all of us – but those who already hold power are unrelenting when it comes to sharing.

The day focused on a few key ideas, but returned again and again to a couple of remarkably simple concepts: listening and belonging. The emphasis was on King’s notion of agape love, an underlying empathy and compassion for all, freeing ourselves from a cycle of hate, and how to practice it – with the acknowledgment that it’s easier said than done.

Author and coach Glodean Champion spoke about the need to listen as a critical step in building empathy. “We can listen without a desire to tell the person why they’re wrong,” she said. “In your silence, you may learn something.”

That also includes listening to oneself, tuning into those moments of reflex when your body suggests – based on learned bias – you should be afraid of someone else. By giving into those impulses, we create silos, instead of bridges. And Champion, a Black woman, shared a brief story illustrating how that bias can cut in all directions. She described a cross-country road trip she took in 2022 with a goal of spreading love. One person she did not expect to speak to was a heavily tattooed white man, wearing a motorcycle jacket, a guy who, according to appearances, she did not presume would be eager to talk to a Black woman about agape love at the carwash. She realized she was scared; but he spoke first, breaking her fear. They spoke about love, and ended up hugging farewell.

Local NAACP President Lyndon Tarver spoke about walking through the Costco parking lot the other day and people in a vehicle locking their door as he passed their SUV. “Why are we still having Jim Crow-era thoughts?” he said. “It’s all about education and communication. We need to talk to each other, not at each other.”

This, perhaps, is where the work begins on a personal level. Instead of fighting the system – a thing without a face, a thing that by definition is unlovable – build a bridge, a person-to-person relationship. Make a new friend who does not look like you. Diversify your own world first; the rest will follow.

SARA RUBIN is the Weekly’s editor. Reach her at sara@mcweekly.com.