Unedited video of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Day keynote session at Bates College, Jan. 21, 2013, in the Gomes Chapel.

00:00 Associate Dean of Students James Reese’s introduction of Clayton Spencer

4:30 President Spencer’s welcome

13:40 Dean of the Faculty Pamela Baker’s overview

20:20: Professor of Rhetoric Charles Nero’s introduction of Anthea Butler

25:40: Anthea Butler’s keynote address

But getting the estimated 46 million poor Americans out of poverty will require wholesale changes in how we talk about, think about and take action around poverty.

So said author, religious studies scholar and media commentator Anthea Butler, keynote speaker for the college’s 2013 Martin Luther King Jr. Day observance on Jan. 21.

Anthea Butler, associate professor and graduate chair of religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania, delivers her keynote address, “MLK and America’s Bad Check: America’s Poor in the 21st Century” in the Gomes Chapel. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College.

Delivered from the Gomes Chapel pulpit, Butler’s address, “MLK and America’s Bad Check: America’s Poor in the 21st Century,” was a pointed reflection on the overall theme for the college’s observance, Debt and Inequality: The Relevance of King’s Forgotten Economic Message.

Her prescriptive message on Monday morning represented something of an answer to the homily she offered the night before at the MLK Memorial Service.

The homily, based on the book of Isaiah and the theme of captivity, was referenced by Charles Nero, professor of rhetoric and faculty member of the African American Studies and American Cultural Studies programs, as he introduced Butler on Monday in his role as chair of the MLK Planning Committee. Nero said:

Dr. Butler argued convincingly that we as a nation are in captivity. We are in captivity to guns, to debt, to fear, to poverty. How do we make our way out of this captivity, Dr. Butler asked. This is the question, she says, we must ask ourselves.

The day’s theme reflects Martin Luther King Jr. focus on poverty beginning in 1967, a “forgotten economic message” today. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College.

In her keynote, Butler began her to question her question by looking back at the Poor People’s Campaign, a six-week program of nonviolent action in Washington, D.C., in the late spring of 1968.

“I’m a historian,” explained Butler, an associate professor and graduate chair of religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania. “Looking back is an important way to look forward.”

The Poor People’s Campaign, King’s brainchild and undertaken after his April 1968 assassination, marked a turning point of the civil rights movement. Despite the Great Society programs and gains of the civil rights movement, “Negros are still impoverished aliens in an affluent society,” King said.

In other words, said Butler, it didn’t mean much to be able to sit at the lunch counter “if you couldn’t afford the hamburger being sold at the lunch counter.”

The Poor People’s Campaign featured an encampment on the Washington Mall. It became a place where activists collaborated around a loose set of goals; where protesters lived in tents and lean-tos; and where a system of food distribution kept everyone fed.

Protesters march at Lafayette Park and Connecticut Avenue in Washington, D.C., on June 18, 1968, during the Poor People’s Campaign. Photo: Warren Leffler, U.S. News & World Report Magazine Photograph Collection, Library of Congress.

Butler compared it to the Occupy movement, where people “came together to start to think about what can you do about poverty and impoverishment in this nation.” In a society of dizzying distraction, the Occupy movement was a rarity:

It was a moment in America where we focused our attention on people who were willing to camp out and say the economic system was wrong. How do we get that again? How do we start to talk about inequities without movements like Occupy? How do you do that?

One step, said Butler, is to change the way we talk and think about poverty in America. If King were alive today, she said, he’d be appalled that 15 percent of Americans live in poverty. But he’d be more appalled at the poor-are-lazy meme in society and the fact that “helping people has become a bad word,” she said:

I call this the nation’s new Ayn Rand philosophy: We’re all on our own; we can choose to be selfish; we don’t have to help anyone; and those we see who are impoverished are there because they want to be.

Butler launched her fiercest criticism at the “prosperity gospel.” Mostly identified with televangelists and Sun Belt megachurches, this theology suggests that good things come to those who don’t wait. “All you have to is quote enough Scripture, pay your tithes, pay your offerings,” and you’ll become prosperous, Butler says. “It tells you that can have your best life now.”

Robert Strong, graduate fellowship adviser and faculty member in English, and others respond to keynote speaker Anthea Butler’s call for a show of hands of student-loan holders. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College.

But that’s hardly true, Butler says. Whereas the African American church traditionally included sound financial advice as part of its ministry, the rise of the prosperity gospel has destroyed that tradition — to the great detriment of church parishioners.

It’s no surprise that Atlanta has had one of the country’s highest foreclosure rates, Butler said, because the metro area is home to prosperity gospel churches, like the Creflo Dollar Ministries and Bishop Eddie Long Ministries, that preach financial irresponsibility. The region’s failed mortgages “were bought by people paying attention to the prosperity gospel.”

The prosperity gospel is emblematic of a moral change in Christian society, she said:

The moral center has changed in the community; the moral center has been to give to your church and help each other, now the church has become a capitalist place to make more money. This is wrong.

It’s a problem bigger than religion, she said. “All of us have a part of this. We’re not training people about money. We have a country of people who don’t know the value of money. We spend and we spend and we spend.”

Solving the poverty problem needs to move beyond the more government / less government argument, Butler said. It even needs to move beyond discussion and posturing.

“I’m tired of the bus tours,” she said, perhaps a reference to the high-profile “Poverty Tour” by Tavis Smiley and Cornel West in 2011. “I don’t know what it gets you if you ride a bus, but you haven’t done anything about feeding someone at the local homeless shelter,” she said.

After the morning keynote, a variety of afternoon panel discussions featured community leaders, students and faculty. Featuring recent Bates sociology research, this panel discussed ways to build financial literary among Lewiston-Auburn’s immigrant community. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College.

Instead of observing, we must “realize that we have poor people who will be intrinsically harmed, and their children will be intrinsically harmed” if we do not take action to help.

Helping, she said, means “changing the rhetoric about poverty and inequality.”

Helping, she said, means “working on poverty in your community. Push back against the language that says you can’t help someone. You might even consider put yourself on the line, in a religious or nonreligious environment, working with those who are homeless.”

She closed with a story about a homeless man in her neighborhood who had resigned himself to his homeless fate. “I’m old,” he told Butler during one of their conversations. “But I wonder how it’s going to be for all the rest of you?”

Earlier in the morning, as the keynote audience arrived at Gomes Chapel, they were warmed up by Three Point Jazz Trio (physicist John Smedley on guitar, music professor Dale Chapman on alto sax, and community member Tim Clough on bass) and their final number, Thelonious Monk’s “Straight, No Chaser.”

After all that jazz, Associate Dean of Students James Reese, considered a founder of the King Day observance at Bates offered a few remarks that drew gasps and applause from the gathering: see story.

Associate Dean of Students James Reese greets Linda Kugblenu ’13 and Victor Babatunde ’11 after the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Service on Jan. 20 in the Gomes Chapel. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College.

Following Reese, President Clayton Spencer invoked the day’s “spirit of self-challenge rather than self-congratulation” by emphasizing that economic inequality should not been seen as inevitable result of “globalization, technology, and cheap manufacturing costs elsewhere in the world.”

Rather, she said, quoting Nelson Mandela, “like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings.”

Spencer said that colleges like Bates “have a choice to make” about their role in solving poverty, about “whether we will succumb to the forces of inequality or throw our institutional weight, however small it may be, into counteracting these forces”:

We make the choice a matter of shared values when we encounter each and every member of this community as an individual deserving of dignity, respect and the opportunity for self-realization.

Following Spencer, Dean of the Faculty Pam Baker ’69′s overview noted that “hand in hand” with the opportunity for study and reflection in a college setting is the responsibility to take “informed and ethical action.”

In that vein, King Day programming “challenges us to think critically about privilege and responsibility, poverty and opportunity, justice and equality.”

Performers in the annual Sankofa production, including director Alex Bolden ’13 (center, in suit), acknowledge the audience’s applause after their evening performance on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College.

Environmental policy expert Julian Agyeman gives the 2012 Martin Luther King Jr. Day keynote address in the Bates Chapel.

Agyeman offered the homily during Sunday’s memorial service and the keynote on Monday morning, both in the Chapel.

Covering the memorial service, reporter Andie Hannon tells of Agyeman growing up in England and looking to the U.S. for black role models, and finding Martin Luther King Jr.

The next day, reporter Dan Hartill covered the keynote, where Agyeman discussed the concept of “just sustainability.”

Agyeman argues that the inequities between the world’s peoples — Americans account for less than 5 percent of the world’s population but use 25 percent of its resources — will eventually provoke people from other countries to act if the wealthy do not change.

“Someday a U.S. president has got to stand up and say, ‘We have got to dial it down.’”

• View story from the Sun Journal on the memorial service, Jan. 16, 2012.
• View story from the Sun Journal on the keynote address and breakouts, Jan. 17, 2012.
• View Bates News coverage of MLK Day.

Environmental policy expert Julian Agyeman delivers his keynote MLK Day address in the Bates College Chapel. (Photographs by Phyllis Graber Jensen)

“Environmental quality and human equality are inextricably linked,” environmental policy expert Julian Agyeman stated in his keynote address for Bates’ Martin Luther King Jr. Day observances Jan. 16.

“True environmental well-being will only exist when there is human well-being.”

Environmental justice, a human-centered approach to environmentalism, was the theme of 2012 King Day activities at Bates. The Bates organizers proceeded upon the premise that, had he lived, civil-rights icon King’s attention to environmental justice wouldn’t have stopped with the Memphis sanitation workers and their demands for equality.

Bates and Morehouse debaters trade arguments before a packed Olin Arts Center Concert Hall audience.

As Agyeman and others made clear, environmental justice is no synonym for sustainability. Instead, it posits that true sustainability isn’t possible without human equality. The concept unified several days’ worth of events at Bates, including a Friday evening performance by environmental justice activist Marc Bamuthi Joseph, a weekend environmental film festival, and on Monday, in addition to Agyeman’s keynote, a full slate of workshops exploring the concept.

The theme may have gotten its most spirited treatment Monday afternoon during the annual Rev. Benjamin Elijah Mays ’20 Debate, in which debaters from Bates and Morehouse College, in a machine-gun battle of rhetoric before a packed Olin Concert Hall, explored the compatibility of environmental sustainability and social justice.

More about King Weekend events at Bates:
Performances by Marc Bamuthi Joseph
The King Memorial Service
Video: Agyeman delivers King Memorial Service Homily
MLK Slide Show on Flickr

Interim President Nancy Cable, Dean of the Faculty Pamela Baker ’70 and King Day Committee chair Charles Nero, professor of rhetoric and African American studies, also spoke during Monday morning’s keynote gathering in a filled-to-capacity College Chapel.

Cable introduced Agyeman, professor and chair of urban and environmental policy and planning at Tufts University, as “one of the world’s leading voices for environmental stewardship and justice.”

Agyeman started out by distinguishing between the sustainability and the environmental-justice movements. He characterized the former as focused on threats to the natural world, largely white and middle-class, deliberative and exclusive, in fact if not by design, because its privileging of expertise.

From left, Assistant Professor of African American and American Cultural Studies Myron Beasley and Professor of Spanish Balthazar Fra-Molinero discuss the MLK Day program while awaiting the keynote address.

Focusing on threats to human health and dignity, the latter is multicultural, disadvantaged, inclusive — and angry, as the poorest people continue to bear the brunt of environmental degradation.

The speaker plotted out a middle course between the two. The concept of “just sustainability,” which Agyeman originated with Robert D. Bullard and Bob Evans, calls for the establishment of a better quality of life for all, in a just and equitable manner, and respecting the limits of the ecosystems that support us.

He offered six examples of approaches to just sustainability:

• Urban design that fosters meaningful interaction between diverse cultural groups, as exemplified by the cities of London and Toronto. The field of urban planning, Agyeman said, does not now emphasize “cultural competence” — the understanding of diversity — in its education and practice. If our planners are not culturally competent, he asked, what hope is there for the creation of effectively intercultural cities?
• Enforceable levels of resource consumption that ensure a fair share for all — the tenet most likely to raise an outcry in the U.S., whose citizens represent only 4 percent of the world’s population but consume 25 percent of the world’s resources. “This is the most dangerous statistic on Earth,” said Agyeman. Unfair now, this disproportion will become a recipe for disaster as nations like China and India seek to emulate American standards of living.
• Basing the measurement of progress on factors like happiness and well-being, rather than economic metrics like gross national product. At the moment, he said, “we don’t measure what matters.”
• Promoting food justice and supporting urban agriculture.
• The sharing and co-production of resources and systems. Agyeman pointed to Zipcar, Wikipedia and other 21st-century phenomena as examples of facility and service models based on cooperation, collaboration and utility, which make efficient use of resources, rather than individual possession and entrepreneurship. “What we’re seeing is the beginning of a paradigm shift,” he said.
• Finally, “spatial justice,” which embraces such concepts as the equitable distribution of livable lands and the democratization of the streetscape.

“There’s always a social-justice element to sustainability questions,” Agyeman concluded. “To me, sustainable development and just sustainability mean using our unlimited mental resources, not our limited environmental resources.”

Baker used her time at the podium to review the promise and reality of Bates egalitarianism, and outlined current initiatives in the vital work of improving diversity and access at the college. In outlining the history of Bates’ King Day observances, Nero offered a shout-out to Sankofa, the student group whose Monday evening performance would be a highlight of the day.

Sankofa director Bethel Kifle '14 acknowledges appreciation from the Schaeffer Theatre audience and production's cast at the end of the evening's performance.

And in her welcome to the throng, which included Bates President-elect Clayton Spencer, Interim President Cable evoked the African philosophical concept of “ubuntu,” which she described as “the shared essence of our humanity,” or, in a translation by Liberian peace activist Leymah Gbowee, “I am what I am because of who we all are.”

Cable said, “We aren’t truly ourselves unless we are related to others.”

Session I Workshops
2:30 p.m.-3:30 p.m.

The Cost of Our Things: A Screening and Discussion of the film Blood in the Mobile
Convened by: Charles Nero, Elizabeth Eames, Stephanie Kelley-Romano
Anthropology, Rhetoric, African American Studies and American Cultural Studies
(This workshop meets across both Sessions I and II)
New Commons 221

Slow Melt: Environmental Injustice in the Vanishing Arctic
Convened by: Loring “Danny” Danforth, Aslaug Asgeirsdottir and Sonja Pieck
Anthropology, Politics and Environmental Studies
Pettengill G65

Ecological Citizenship and Global Justice
Convened by: Julie McCabe ’12 and Women and Gender Studies
Hedge 106

A Tribute to Wangari Maathai: African Environmentalist and Nobel Laureate
Sponsored by the Africana Club
Pettengill G21

“Love, Women and Flowers” or Work, Exploitation and Toxicity
Convened by: Faculty and students in the Spanish department
This workshop meets across both Sessions I and II.
Pettengill G52

Civil Disobedience and the New Environmental Movement
Meet filmmaker Josh Fox, director of the documentary Gasland, about the environmental damage caused by the natural-gas mining practice of hydraulic fracturing. (Gasland is being screened at 3 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 15, in Olin Concert Hall.)
Convened by: Environmental Studies House
Pettengill G10

Session II Workshops
3:45 p.m.–5 p.m.

Screening and Discussion of The Warriors of Qiugang: A Chinese Village Fights Back
Convened by: Xing Fan, Amanda Pierog ’15, Reilly Bergin-Pugh ’14, Leah Cole ’12, Grace Haessler ‘12, Asian Studies
Pettengill G21

Re-imagining Community: A Sub-National Approach to the Interconnected Work of Environmental and Gender Justice
Convened by: Douglas Kempner, Alanna Prince ’13 and Women and Gender Studies
Panelists: Ben Chin ’07, Nicola Wells, Nate Libby ’07, Craig Saddlemire ’07
Roger Williams 118

Soul Jazz and Soul Food: “Cookin’ ” Jazz in the 1950s and 1960s
Convened by: Tom Hayward and Dale E. Chapman
Hedge 106

Carbon Denial: What Is at Risk?
Convened by: Jane Costlow, John Smedley, Laura Sewall, Julie Rosenbach, Lynne Lewis, Aslaug Asgeirsdottir
Environmental Studies, Physics, Economics, Politics, Harward Center and the Office of the Environmental Coordinator
Pettengill G65

Culminating the college’s Jan. 17 observances of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, students used music, dance, poetry and prose to survey the vast landscape of the African Diaspora, and their own diverse backgrounds, in an evening performance in Schaeffer Theatre.

Titled Sankofa, a term from Ghana’s Akan language referring to the idea of going back for what you have forgotten, the show emphasized the importance of remembering the past in order to appreciate the present and improve the future.

Reflecting the concept “Get Up, Stand Up: The Fierce Urgency of Now” — the theme for this year’s MLK Day programming at Bates — the performers captivated audience members with their talent, pride and intensity. Fellow students, faculty and townspeople including members of the local Somali community filled the theater. The production, the first of its kind, drew hoots and hollers, laughter and tears from the audience.

The production featured emotional readings, striking dance and uplifting music, displaying the talents of students from myriad backgrounds and disciplines. Directed by Linda Kugblenu ’13 of New York City and produced by Cynthia Alexandre-Brutus of Brooklyn, N.Y., the production was as much a lesson in history and culture as entertainment.

In one piece, actresses Omosede Eholor of New York City and Brittney Davis of Chicago, both first-years, performed Alexandre-Brutus’ adaption of Sojourner Truth’s speech “Ain’t I A Woman?” Rendered as a dialogue, the scene juxtaposed the inequalities facing black women in the 18th and 19th centuries with the modern context, a contrast heightened by stage lighting and costumes.

In “Four Blast From the Past,” four performers portrayed liberation movement leaders from across Africa. Raina Jacques ’13 portrayed Yaa AsanteWaa, queen mother of the Asante confederacy. She vehemently delivered the speech that stirred the men of the community to fight against British colonial domination and proclaimed that she would call upon her fellow women to get their king back.

Bisola Folarin ’14 presented Wangari Maathai, the contemporary Kenyan environmental and political activist, proclaiming the threats to the forests by her own government.

The Rev. King was honored as Jourdan Fanning ’13 performed an excerpt from his renowned “I Have a Dream” speech, expressing a fierce exigency of the need to remember the injustices the civil rights movement has fought to surmount.

The program also included dance in a variety of genres, from traditional Ghanian dance to a sampler of Caribbean styles to step dance performed by the college’s Dynasty team. Five students took part in a poetry slam; a piece honored the local Somali community with the piece “I Am a Somali”; and Bates’ own Gospelaires, a relatively recent addition to the college’s robust singing scene, offered the spiritual “Oh Freedom is Coming.” And an intermission gave the audience a chance to share their impressions.

The show stimulated the emotions with powerful performances that highlighted the diversity of Bates students. The standing ovation that closed the show expressed both admiration for the troupe and an entreaty for an encore next year.

– Kelly Cox ’11

“It’s been a long, a long time coming, but I know a change is gonna come.” The hopeful words of the Sam Cooke song sung by soloist Megan Guynes ’11 made a fitting opening for the Jan. 16 Memorial Service of Worship that began Martin Luther King Jr. Day observances at Bates.

The centerpiece was the Rev. James Lawson’s sermon. Lawson was an important advocate for nonviolent activism during the civil rights movement, and was instrumental to the founding of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in 1960.

A personal friend of King’s, Lawson told the Bates audience how King had first encouraged him to move down South and continue his work at the heart of the emerging civil rights movement. Lawson praised King’s work as “breaking down barriers of fear, silence, racism and sexism, and lifting up a new era.”

Lawson also emphasized that the campaign goes on. “I want you to understand that to celebrate Martin Luther King’s life is to celebrate a movement made up of hundreds of thousands of people,” Lawson told his attentive audience.

Pointing to the many issues of violence, fear and injustice that our nation continues to struggle with, he said, “We, the American people, have not permitted the slogan ‘equality, liberty and justice for all’ to be the slogan of our land.”

He urged, “Destroy what destroys us, and replace it with instruments that allow human creativity and joy.”

Taking place in the Bates Chapel, the service was attended by 175 or so members of the Bates and Lewiston-Auburn communities. The audience was also treated to inspirational readings from students and faculty, music provided by Bates ensembles the Crosstones and the Gospelaires, and a dance performance by Bates’ liturgical dance troupe, Justified.

– Gabrielle Otto ’11

In case you think that all the heavy lifting in the cause of social justice is over and done with, the Rev. James Lawson has news for you.

“I am absolutely convinced” that the 21st century will be the time for a social justice movement that overshadows the transformative campaigns of the previous century, Lawson told a Bates College audience gathered on Jan. 17 to celebrate the life and work of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

It will be a movement, he proclaimed in his keynote speech, even “greater in its intensity and its power of truth” than the civil rights movement in which he played a key role. In an effort that spans all faiths and targets all prejudices, “we must work for the dismantling of the systems of oppression in the United States,” said Lawson, an influential advocate of non-violent activism who worked closely with King in the 1950s and ’60s.

Memorial Service of Worship

A Sun Journal report

A WGME-TV report

The performance “Sankofa”

Also on hand was Vinie Burrows, the actress and activist, who moderated a discussion and will offer performances at Bates and elsewhere in Maine during the week. A debate and a student performance Monday and a worship service Sunday evening featuring a sermon by Lawson were also in the plan.

Lawson’s keynote provided the right message for a King Day observance meant to spur action. Borrowing its first half from reggae singer Bob Marley and its second half from King, the theme for the day was “Get Up. Stand Up. The Fierce Urgency of Now.”

Listeners also heard much about the roles of Christ and of Gandhi in the philosophy of non-violence as practiced by the keynote speakers.

Bates President Elaine Tuttle Hansen and Dean of Faculty Jill Reich offered opening remarks during the morning keynote session in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall. Hansen pointed out that Bates — founded by abolitionists and always open to men and women of all races and religions — was distinctively qualified as a place to celebrate and reflect on King’s legacy. Hansen noted that the Jan. 8 massacre in Tucson “reminds us that the world needs the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King more than ever.”

“We need both Dr. King’s lessons and his persistence. No matter how dire the situation, he said, ‘I refuse to allow myself to fall into the dark chambers of pessimism.’ “

Reich enjoined the Olin Arts Center audience of some 250 people to step beyond the ceremony of a single day and turn inspiration into action. “The inspirational words in which we find comfort are not enough,” she said. “We must find ways to live them — not just on special days like this one, but every hour, every minute, day in, day out.”

An elegant figure in a pinstripe suit and Western boots, Lawson wore a wireless microphone so he could pace the Olin stage as he talked. His address — titled, after King’s book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? — ranged effortlessly from past to present, from his own story to that of the civil rights movement, and thence to the nagging unmet demands of social justice.

The theme that shaped his talk was the deep imperative he felt from Christ and Gandhi to the exercise of non-violence in the cause of human rights. “You have before you a follower of Jesus who began resisting injustice around the age of 4, 78 years ago,” he said.

After he struck someone who used a racial slur against him, Lawson’s mother forbade further violence and urged that he wield brotherly love instead, “and make it work for every issue in my life, experiment with it, and make it a form of strength instead of weakness.” That was the seed of a lifetime of non-violence that was enriched by Gandhi and bloomed into full flower during the civil rights movement.

Though he rejects any political labels for himself, Lawson was eloquent in cataloging the evils still perpetrated by Western society and the white-male power structure. “The major obstacle to the advancement of the human race in the world today is white Western civilization,” he said, while acknowledging that he is himself a product of that power structure.

Anticipating Kolieboi’s talk several hours later, Lawson didn’t spare a conservative evangelical community that has, he believes, lost sight of Christianity’s essence. “One might ask, why does Christianity put all the weight on ‘Are you saved?’ instead of on doing God’s work on Earth?” he wondered. “It seems to me that the notion of the Kingdom of God is that there is no area of human life that does not benefit from learning the ways of truth and compassion.”

In describing his own work as a co-director of the Equality Ride, which periodically brings young LGBTQ advocates to colleges and universities to advocate for fairness and diversity, Kolieboi (now LGBTQ community coordinator at Oberlin College) paid explicit tribute to Lawson’s gift to American activism of non-violence.

But in contrast to Lawson’s free-ranging review of a life in social activism, Kolieboi hewed closely to the values and operations of the Equality Ride and its parent organization, Soulforce. Describing the prejudice against the LGBTQ community at some evangelical Christian schools, he admitted that it was an education even for him to discover the harsh consequences suffered by anyone expressing same-sex attraction — expulsion, suspension, loss of financial aid, compulsory “conversion therapy.”

Pointing to racist and homophobic sentiments that still persist even among social activists, Kolieboi echoed Lawson’s call for a social justice movement that would transcend specific communities of interest to strive for equality, justice and freedom for all people.

“We are not single-issue people,” he said. “We can’t talk about LGBTQ rights without talking about access to education, or about healthcare or the prison-industrial complex.”

He ended his address with a maxim from Napoleon Bonaparte: “There are only two forces in the world, the sword and the spirit. In the long run, the sword will always be conquered by the spirit.”

Breakout sessions after each keynote, and finally a late-afternoon plenary session with Lawson and Kolieboi, sought to digest and expand upon the speakers’ thoughts.

Vinie Burrows led one morning session. The petite actress wielded an outsize personal authority that kept the session moving along despite the group’s initial reticence to speak. She asked the group of about 40 students and Lewiston-Auburn community members how they would respond to the charge to action that Lawson had issued. Like society in miniature, the resulting discussion was a collision between prescriptions for action and descriptions of the obstacles.

In the end, it boiled down to a question simple but profound: Why can’t students make friends outside their familiar circles? An African American student applauded Bates’ efforts to diversify the student body, but said that in spite of growing diversity on campus, the races rarely mix in Commons. “Is it really diversity if it’s not integrated?” she wondered.

The burden is on students, a male student replied. “The point of school is to expand our horizons. People need to challenge themselves.”

About 40 people attended an afternoon breakout moderated by Erica Rand, professor of art and visual culture, and Cynthia Alexandre-Brutus ’13 of Brooklyn, N.Y. Focusing on the struggle to expand gay rights and on issues with conservative Christians, the session was sparked up by the contributions of LGBTQ activists from the community.

One of those activists offered cause for optimism, pointing out that despite the considerable prejudice still in place, the LGBTQ cause has been met “with the fastest change in opinion in American history. We are making tremendous progress.”

“We have to thank the civil rights and women’s rights movements,” someone else said. “This is the third time we’ve been through this.”

But the discussion nevertheless returned, inevitably, to the basic need to spark meaningful action.

“It’s hard to create that safe space where people can just be honest” about race, women’s issues and so on, said Alexandre-Brutus. “How can we get people engaged?”

“Maybe do this more than once a year?” another student suggested.

– Additional reporting by Allison Lizars ’11

Called “an actress of superb virtuosity” by The Associated Press, performer and social justice activist Vinie Burrows offers two performances at Bates College this month.

Burrows, visiting Bates in conjunction with the college’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day observances, offers a Noonday Concert Series performance at 12:30 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 18, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St. The event is open to the public at no charge. For more information contact 207-786-6135 or olinarts@bates.edu.

Burrows then presents her acclaimed solo show Walk Together Children, a chronicle of the African American experience, at 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 20, in Schaeffer Theatre, 305 College St. This event is also open to the public at no cost, but tickets are required. A question-and-answer session follows. For tickets and more information, please call 207-786-6161 or visit www.batestickets.com.

Hailed as a classic in black theater, Walk Together Children uses the poetry, prose and songs of black writers to tell the epic story of survival after the auction block and of present-day struggles and triumphs of African Americans.

Burrows began her acting career as a child in a Broadway production of The Wisteria Trees featuring Helen Hayes. Since then, she has been featured in more than 6,000 performances on and off-Broadway, on television and in film, as well as on the stages of theater organizations, universities and other organizations around the world.

Burrows has performed with Mary Martin, Claude Rains, Ossie Davis, James Earl Jones, Louis Gossett and Earle Hyman. She has appeared on As the World Turns, NBC’s Today, ABC’s Good Morning America, CBS Presents and Hallmark Hall of Fame.

She also hosted More Than Half the World, a weekly radio show in New York City, for three years. Her guests included grassroots housing activists, politicians, actors, writers, victims of domestic abuse, diplomats and street vendors as well as visitors from Scandinavia, South America and the Caribbean.

Her solo productions include a repertoire of eight one-woman shows, including Walk Together Children, Rose McClendon: Harlem’s Gift to Broadway, A Child is Born, Daughters of the Sun, Song of Lowino and Sister! Sister!

Burrows has received a variety of honors and awards throughout her career including the Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2002), a 1996 Emmy nomination for her narration of The Amistad Revolt and the 1986 Paul Robeson Award from the Actors’ Equity Association.

She completed a bachelor’s degree in pre-law at New York University and received her master’s in performance studies in 2002. She has served as an adjunct professor at St. Peter’s College and Sarah Lawrence College, a lecturer at The New School for Social Research and as theater director at Franklin & Marshall College.

Burrows is the permanent representative for the Women’s International Democratic Federation, a non-governmental organization in consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. She is also chair emeritus of the NGO Committee on Southern Africa.

Here’s a detailed schedule of events for the 2011 Martin Luther King Jr. Day observances at Bates College. All these events are open to the public at no cost. For more information, please call 207-786-6400.

Sunday, Jan. 16

The annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day Memorial Service of Worship takes place at 7 p.m. Sunday in the Bates College Chapel, 275 College St. The Rev. James Lawson, a definitive figure in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s, offers the sermon. Also featured is music by two student ensembles, the Gospelaires and the a cappella Crosstones, as well as a liturgical dance by the troupe Justified. To learn more, please call 207-786-8272.

Monday, Jan. 17

At 9:30 a.m., Lawson presents the first keynote address of the college’s MLK Day events in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St. His topic: the continued importance of direct action and social justice in the 21st century.

In the first of two breakout sessions in Pettengill Hall (rooms TBA; 4 Andrews Road), starting at 11 a.m., members of the campus community discuss ideas presented in Lawson’s keynote address and plan for future activism.

Members of the debate teams from Morehouse and Bates colleges, joined by local high school debaters, address the resolution that “Violence is a justified response to political oppression” in a debate at 1 p.m. in the Benjamin Mays Center, 95 Russell St.

For the second keynote address, Asher Kolieboi, LGBTQ community coordinator in the Multicultural Resource Center at Oberlin College, examines challenges for social activists in 21st-century American culture. He speaks at 2:30 p.m. in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall.

Another round of breakout sessions pondering Kolieboi’s remarks begins at 3:30 p.m. in Pettengill Hall.

Exploration of the day’s theme concludes with a plenary discussion with Lawson and Kolieboi at 4:30 p.m. in Pettengill Hall (room TBA).

Bates students present the performance Sankofa, a celebration of the African diasporic experience through theater, music, dance and spoken word, at 7:30 p.m. in Schaeffer Theatre, 305 College St.

Tuesday, Jan. 18

Vinie Burrows, the renowned actress, storyteller and social justice activist, offers a Noonday Concert Series performance in conjunction with the King Day observances at 12:30 p.m. in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall. For more information, please contact 207-786-6135 or olinarts@bates.edu.

Thursday, Jan. 20

Vinie Burrows (see previous item) returns to perform her acclaimed solo show Walk Together Children, a chronicle of the African American experience, at 7 p.m. in Schaeffer Theatre, 305 College St. A question-and-answer session follows. Though this event is open to the public at no cost, tickets are required. For tickets and more information, please call 207-786-6161.