New Haven Independent

They were learning, singing, dancing, and poetry-slamming. It was by far the biggest turnout in the history of the event, which has evolved into New Haven’s premier gathering honoring King. Stairwells and activity areas were jammed, and the room where poets and rappers from all over the Northeast took the stage was filled with enthusiastic audience members, some of whom got to judge the performances. An additional 1,000 attended on Sunday, the lower numbers due to icy streets and sidewalks.

(Click here for a related story on a weekend Peabody/ King event.)

Some of the activity tables were more in line than others with the theme of Martin Luther King’s Legacy of Environmental and Social Justice. Shakila McKnight, 14, a member of the New Haven-based environmentally focused youth leadership program, Solar Youth, was staffing a table.

“We’re doing an environmental justice scavenger hunt, so everybody can learn about the environment,” she said. Kids had to find answers to questions about civil rights and environmental issues on a big board.

A teacher from High School in the Community and a student were staffing the table of the New Haven Environmental Justice Network. Junior Daniel Velez said he decided to learn more about environmental health “since my generation is going to have the downfall of this — but hopefully we won’t.” He was signing up people to switch to green energy, which can be done through consumers’ regular electricity provider and costs just a little more. “I’m learning more as I’m getting people to sign up and look for cleaner energy sources,” he said, “and speaking to people, I’m learning even more.”

His teacher, Joyce Harned, who lives in Fair Haven, is working to clean up the air around town. “Right now the focus is on asthma and asthma triggers,” she said. “Really dirty air exacerbates asthma or allergy problems, so we’re hoping people will pay that little extra to sign up for clean energy, because one of the reasons our air is so dirty is that we have some of the worst polluting plants producing electricity.”

Around the corner, storyteller Waltrina Kirkland-Mullins (in photo) explained some history to several rows of kids and adults sitting on benches in front of a painting of birds. (The Peabody is a natural history museum, after all.) “Don’t think that the civil rights movement was just an all-black thing,” she told her audience. “There was a rainbow of people helping out behind the scenes. You gotta do your research and learn about it.” Of the Montgomery bus boycott, she said, “Those people marched and marched and marched — December, January, February, March, April, they marched, May, June, July, August, they marched, September, October, November, December 21, 1956 — then black people were able to ride the buses of Montgomery, Alabama, wherever they wanted to ride.” She summarized, “Dr. King was all over the place pulling people together, to say, ‘You know what? Hate is not the answer. Love is the answer.’”

Attendees also had a chance to take a (dry) canoe ride, learn about New Haven’s water cycle, play mapping games, make a multi-cultural quilt, create their own ecological footprint, and lots more.

The two-day celebration also included a talk by Bernice Johnson Reagon, founder of Sweet Honey in the Rock, about lessons learned from the civil rights movement and her affiliation with Dr. King as a member of the Freedom Singers.