Chicago leaders invoke MLK's teachings against Trump's immigration policies
Celebrating the holiday that marks Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 97th birthday Monday, political leaders across Chicago gathered to invoke his teachings in the ongoing fight against President Donald Trump’s agenda.
The Rainbow PUSH Coalition, an organization founded by King protégé the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr., held its annual breakfast celebrating King at a downtown hotel Monday. Speakers recited King quotes and called on people to think of the Civil Rights Movement when discouraged by current events, particularly the federal government’s aggressive deportation campaign that blanketed Chicago’s immigrant communities late last year and is now focusing on Minneapolis.
Hundreds attended the breakfast, which had a theme of “building a beloved community,” an idea that several speakers referenced in their remarks. U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson were among those in attendance.
Yusef Jackson, son of Jackson Sr. and chief operating officer of Rainbow PUSH, recognized that his father couldn’t be in attendance. The elder Jackson, 84, was hospitalized late last year, undergoing treatment for a rare neurological condition for nearly two weeks. It was his first time missing the annual breakfast in the 36 years it has been held.
“When I saw him this morning, I asked if he could make it,” an emotional Yusef Jackson said. “My mother said, ‘You’re not leaving the house today.’ This is my first time doing this. I tell you, I had an emotional moment. I never thought of being here doing this, being here in person.”
Illinois Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton, who's running for retiring U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin's seat, said she thought of her father Henry, who marched alongside King and Jackson Sr. in the historic 1965 protest marches from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.
“When he was asked why he marched, he simply said, ‘I didn’t like how human beings were being treated.’ Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?” she said. “This is our moment to choose courage over comfort, to choose faith over fear.”
Met by whoops and cheers, Johnson pushed for King’s ideals to be considered in laws, not only celebrations and commemorations.
“It’s not just to honor and remember his words, it’s about the manifestation of those words being codified in policy,” the mayor said.
Johnson also acknowledged Renee Nicole Good, the woman shot and killed by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis earlier this month, and condemned the U.S. military's overnight raid and capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
“Because if you can shoot a woman in cold blood and kidnap a sovereign leader in another country in the same week, that’s why remembering Dr. King and celebrating his legacy is not just for a meal or a moment,” the mayor said. “It’s about making sure that we hold onto hope, building the power that’s necessary to fight for what is right.”
Don Lemon, a journalist best known for his tenure on CNN, encouraged audience members to remember King’s nonviolent strategies and ideas of acceptance and equality at moments of heightened political tension, referencing federal immigration action in Minneapolis.
“I’ve covered and participated in many Martin Luther King events over the years,” Lemon said. “This year, it feels different, doesn’t it? America feels different, the world feels different. I can’t think of a single time in recent history that we have needed Dr. King’s words and wisdom quite as much as we do today. … We need to stand up, that’s what Dr. King would do.”