Millennials reflect on MLK

Ashley Marchand leads the Washington, D.C., chapter of Stop Modern Slavery, a nonprofit organization that raises awareness about trafficking and slavery within the U.S. She is a graduate of Houston Baptist University.

How did you become involved in social advocacy?

I have incredible parents who were active in the civil rights movement in Louisiana. I'm a descendant from slaves and slave owners in the South, which is also why I feel particularly tied to (the) issue of modern slavery. In high school I remember I was watching TV and I saw that in the Sudan some people were enslaved. Then I found out that (slavery) not only existed in the Sudan but also in other countries, including the U.S.

Who inspires you?

Saturday’s march was brought to my attention by Shamere McKenzie, a 30-year-old woman who was trafficked and forced into prostitution while attending college in New York. She ran away but was arrested and sent to Washington, D.C., to participate in a program that provided services to victims of human trafficking. My heroes are the survivors, people like Shamere and other people I know who have been victims.

What are your hopes for (Saturday's) march? What are the issues America needs to work on?

My hope is that by participating in Saturday's march, D.C. Stop Modern Slavery can lend its voice to citizens in this nation who have not been able to fully realize the dream that Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of 50 years ago. At that time, he called the March on Washington the "greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation." And it was exactly that. Yet, in our neighborhoods 50 years later, human trafficking is a pressing issue. Slavery still exists here.

Jorge Andres Soto is a public policy associate at the National Fair Housing Alliance, a national civil rights organization, and is a volunteer with the Latino GLBT History Project in Washington, D.C. He is the son of Mexican and Chilean immigrants and lives in Washington's Bloomingdale neighborhood.

How did you become involved in social advocacy?

A lot of it for me was growing up in a segregated neighborhood and comparing that to the opportunities in the neighborhood where some of the people I went to high school with lived, and had access to generational wealth.

My mother always had medical issues; she has been disabled for most of my life. That experience, combined with living in a Latino community very close to Los Angeles International Airport, informed my consciousness. I became more thoughtful about what I was observing. I was always a loudmouth, always sort of combative. An authority figure putting words out has never been enough for me. I was one of two people in my neighborhood who got out and went to college.

How does King inspire you?

When I was about 8, I broke my leg rollerblading on a ramp on one of the factories next to my neighborhood. It was broken in four places. My godmother showed up at my home with a bunch of readings, including Martin Luther King's "Letter From Birmingham City Jail." It's an incredibly impassioned story about the need to push forward.

What are your hopes for the march? What are the issues America needs to work on?

In a little over 30 years, this country is going to be mostly communities of color. And the fact is that segregation -- unequal access to good health care, food, schools -- is going to impact the future of this country. The neighborhood you live in determines your life expectancy. When (that future) comes, the majority of our population isn't going to have the technical expertise -- math, science (skills) in its workforce -- to be able to compete on a global level, because public schools are being neglected.

Daniel Maree is a social media strategist, a filmmaker and the founder of the Million Hoodies for Justice Movement. He lives in New York City.

How did you become involved in social advocacy?

I grew up in South Africa, where my parents were very active in the anti-apartheid movement. My grandfather was on Robben Island. It gave me a worldview that really taught me about the oppressed and the poor -- the other, so to speak. I was also very politically active on campus.

I have some experience living in Gainesville, Fla., where I would be home in a predominantly white neighborhood and I would be stopped by the police walking home, for no other reason than being a black male. Trayvon could be me, he could be my little sister, and that was just unacceptable. And at the time there was no national news coverage of the story, and I knew I could use my skills to raise awareness.

How does King inspire you? Who else does?

I am inspired by Nelson Mandela, Dr. King and by a number of philosophers whom I studied at American University: Noam Chomsky, Kwame Anthony Appiah at Princeton and others. They have all really advocated for a return to critical thinking, a return to American pragmatism and an advocacy for intelligence.

What are your hopes for this anniversary and march?

My hopes are that leadership within the civil rights movement would be restored and that those leaders would acknowledge the power and the contributions of millennials, young people, to this fight. I hope that they offer a vision on what we can accomplish in the next years and in the next decade -- Bernice King (Martin Luther King Jr.'s youngest daughter) and others actually did this. I really came away with the feeling that our leadership had been restored.

Rhiana Gunn-Wright, who graduated from Yale University, is the Mariam K. Chamberlain Fellow in Women and Public Policy at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research in Washington, D.C., where she also works with sex workers as a health outreach volunteer.

How did you become involved in social advocacy?

My mom runs a nonprofit in Chicago. She started that when I was about 3, maybe 5, so I was really young, and I just saw her do that work ever since I was little. So when I was talking about problems in the world such as "I don’t like racism" as an 8-year-old, she'd say: “OK, but what are you going to do about it?” Ever since I was little, if you see a problem in the world, it’s not enough to just be sad about it. Talk was never enough for her. 

How does King inspire you? Who else does?

Faith is really important in my life. I used to think that people shouldn't be sex workers, or drug addicts, but you see examples of Dr. King meeting people where they are, on the streets, trying to keep them safe. They are also trying to do the best; you should respect that. Actions don’t make you worthless. Everyone has worth. I feel like often we are not in a position to judge. We’ve all done things. King's thinking, "You just shouldn’t be racist, but I sort of understand where that comes from, and I'm going to walk with you through that, but I'm not going to stand for that," resonated with me.

Other people I admire are Constance Baker Motley and Ella Baker, because they believed in justice and also because they're black women. They were often marginalized in the movement.

What are your hopes for this anniversary?

I think poverty is a big issue. My hopes for the march are that all these groups who are interested in all these different issues, such as climate change and racial profiling, can unite, either around a common set of issues or around individual issues as a larger coalition. I hope that people can see the connections between issues.

I think the march had a lot of talk about poverty and economic justice. It’d be good to hear the word "poor" again. We hear a lot about the middle class, but the lack of job quality and living wages leads to poverty. Those are a lot of the jobs we are creating now.

Melech Thomas is an intern at Bethel AME Church in Baltimore and a graduate of Howard University, where he founded a student-run campaign against gun violence in Washington, D.C. He is entering his final year of study at Princeton Theological Seminary.

How did you become involved in social advocacy?

A lot of my activism comes through the ministry. I’m a firm believer that you cannot be a person of faith without a deep concern for the least of us. To me that’s non-negotiable.

I'm not a typical activist. Growing up, I wanted to be a basketball player. But it was the election of 2008, when the media started to vilify people like Father Michael Pfleger, (when I became interested). The more they vilified them, the more it made me interested in the type of work that they do in the fight for liberation. That was a life-changing moment. 

Who inspires you? How does King inspire you?

The person who inspired me is Jesus. Jesus was a fearless man, a man who was unashamed for his love for people. It made him want to fight for those people. His willingness to sacrifice for those who are rejected from society inspired me to honor that.

As for King, I’m more inspired by the MLK people don’t talk about, the MLK from 1966 to 1968, a middle-class, educated man from Atlanta, who decided to forsake his middle-class background and immerse himself in the struggle of poor and impoverished people. It wasn’t as much about race as it was about the fact that poor people were being economically oppressed by the government. There's King's evil menage a trois: racism, capitalism and militarism. When those three things come together, they become the evil that America seems to be addicted to.

What are your hopes for the march? What are the issues America needs to work on?

My hope for (Saturday's) march was that it would move beyond just a celebrity photo opportunity, and that those people who claim to have the passion for truth and justice and freedom would really get their hands dirty and meet the people where they are. Whether it's in South Central in Chicago, whether it's in Palestine or in Sanford, Fla., I hope that people get active. King’s movement wasn’t about oratory, but about sacrifice.