The MLK Festival of Service brought together over 4,000 Baton Rouge residents to clean up and beautify areas of Winbourne Avenue and touched on themes of activism addressed in the University’s MLK Commemorative Program.
Helena Williams, Director of Operations for The Walls Project which put on the service event, said the non-profit organization was founded in 2012 to reinvigorate downtown Baton Rouge. The first MLK Festival of Service was held in Jan. 2015 and had about 150 participants paint the support columns of the overpass next to Pastime Restaurant.
“The point of this event really is to follow the vision of what Dr. Martin Luther King talked about, about togetherness and the knitting of communities,” Williams said.
Symone Sanders, press secretary for Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign and CNN political commentator, spoke at the Union Theater about the need for radical revolutionism, which she defined as having the will to express views in favor of social justice that large portions of society may be uncomfortable with.
“I truly believe there is a fundamental misunderstanding of who Dr. King was,” Sanders said. “Dr. King knew, I believe, that it wasn’t enough to ask for equality, but for equity.”
Equity is one the main goals of the MLK Festival of Service. This year’s event sought to improve businesses and other areas on and around Winbourne Avenue, which was heavily affected by the 2016 flood.
In addition to improving the area physically, the project also brought numerous service providers in the community, like the police, to make people aware of all the governmental and commercial services available to them.
The Walls Project planned the service event over the last six months. Williams said the many late nights were worth it to see the community come together for the four-day event held from Jan. 18-21.
The fifth annual MLK Festival of Service culminated in a block party at Howell Community Park. A local band played jazzy rock as people milled around, listening to the tunes and learning about services in their community.
Kinesiology senior Tiara Spann is a volunteer for the St. Bernard Project, a service organization that worked with The Walls Project to help raise awareness for disaster preparedness.
“We’re actually here in the city still rebuilding homes from the 2016 flood,” Spann said.
Spann said several organizations worked together to make the event as helpful and informative as possible.
The Walls Project wants to honor the teachings and legacy of King, and so each year the event is held through the holiday weekend that remembers his life. Spann said she believes King’s message of unity resonates most strongly in today’s world.
“We want to show that we can all come together and make something beautiful like this happen and it really honored him today I think,” Spann said.
Sanders believes that people need to come together in support of social justice reform, but also feels that people should not be afraid to challenge their friends’ views if they find them problematic
“We need to push the status-quo,” Sanders said. “Far too many of us are not willing to take on our allies.”
During the MLK Festival of Service, volunteers worked together along with hired artists to create murals and other artwork on different businesses and residences in the area, in addition to other projects like garden beds. Williams said it was her first time managing an event of this scale.
“Obviously I had no precursor of how hard it is to manage people,” Williams said. “But it really wasn’t as hard as it could’ve been because everyone was so eager to do a good job.”
