April 4th-6th
It began to drizzle lightly as Elder Bernice King, the youngest daughter of Martin Luther King, Jr., started her address from the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. She stood on the spot that her father fell 40 years ago to the day, and preached to the crowd. She wove a beautiful lesson from her faith into the tapestry of the crowd: that the Israelites wandered through the desert for 40 years before reaching the Promised Land.
We were in Memphis for a conference beginning Friday, April 4th entitled “the Dream Reborn.” Organized by Green for All, a green jobs initiative out of Oakland, California that promotes the equitable development of the green economy, the conference was set to mark the 40th anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination – to celebrate, to reawaken, and to reorganize the equity and inclusion that Dr. King lived and died for.
As Elder Bernice King put it, just as the Israelites wandered for 40 years before reaching the Promised Land, we have done the same. The generation that witnessed the civil rights exodus has wandered through the realizations of King’s dreams, and is now passing the torch to the future of the social rights movement.
We are the future of the social rights movement. The Dream Reborn was a meeting of the minds from around the country, set to place the power of the emerging green market in the hands of the communities that need it the most. “Green pathways strong enough to pull people out of poverty” is a rally of this movement. Create and sustain a populist response to our current environmental situation that centers itself upon those that should, and must, receive the most benefit.
Van Jones, the Director of Green for All, summed it up nicely. “Your generation will no longer be charged to ‘take back’ our Country. From here on out, you will be asked only to take it forward.”
For more information on Green Jobs, check out the following links:
And be sure to keep posted on our green jobs initiatives, especially as we head down to North Carolina…
