From Exclusion to Engagement: Community Heroes
As you look around your community, do you recognize the heroes who are fighting for justice, peace and equality?
Dr. Martin Luther King famously wrote in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” :
“One day the South will recognize its real heroes… They will be young high school and college students, young ministers of the gospel and a host of their elders courageously and nonviolently sitting in at lunch counters and willingly going to jail for conscience’s sake. One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters they were in reality standing up for the best in the American dream”
In advance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and on the anniversary of his birth, we want to lift up a few of the stories on the LandofOpportunity platform that show people across the country: high school students, artists, young public housing residents, activists, who are, in their own ways, following in Dr. King’s footsteps and fighting for social justice in their communities.
For example, the hundreds of young people, mostly Black and Latino, who marched on downtown Boston in 2012 and again in 2013, to call for youth employment, echoing some of the demands of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Many of these young marchers organize with the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, which has deeply engaged youth in the working-class Roxbury/North Dorchester neighborhood in all aspects of civic and political life since 1984. Learn more about DSNI through our interactive video “Youth Rising,” produced in partnership with the filmmakers of Gaining Ground.
WATCH: YOUTH RISING
Exclusion/Engagement also features these powerful stories about community engagement: participatory budgeting campaigns rethink community spending, from Vallejo to the Bronx; young residents of Chicago’s demolished Cabrini Green development challenge local politicians; New Orleans artist Marcus Akinlana lifts up Black culture, history, and resistance in the midst of an exploitative tourist economy.
Join the conversation. Who is carrying on Dr. King’s legacy in your community?
IN THE NEWS
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Land of Opportunity to Participate in the 2012 BAVC Producers Institute: Stories With Impact
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November 14, 2011
Affordable Housing
GNOFHAC files suit against landlord over discrimination against Latino renters.
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B.W. Cooper residents organize successfully for jobs in the rebuilding of their neighborhood
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Footage from Land of Opportunity to be used in opening credits of Treme: Season 2
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February 25, 2011
Affordable Housing
HANO Chairman David Gilmore pledges to hire locally for latest public housing construction.
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February 07, 2011
Disaster Recovery
2010 census reveals shifting population and demographics in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
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November 17, 2010
Immigration
Judge orders release of Orleans Parish inmate who was jailed for too long
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Land Of Opportunity Sneak Peek with "Housing is a Human Right" at the Brecht Forum in NYC
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August 23, 2010
Urban Planning
Land of Opportunity to be featured at Maysles Institute in Harlem!
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