Sometimes, during the course of conversation with someone about my childhood in Louisiana, I get asked why I didn’t end up going down a different path like some of the young men we see in the media.
Why didn’t I end up succumbing to alcohol or drugs? Why didn’t I end up on the streets?
My answer is always the same: My grandmother, Elsie, paid too high a price for me to go down the wrong path. I still remember those times as a teen when I came home at night after a basketball game or a church event. There she was, sitting on the edge of her chair wringing her hands and rocking back and forth. She had good reason to worry. She knew what could go wrong for a young black man in the deep south in the 1960s. So she worked endless hours to provide for her children and grandchildren, at great cost to herself.
My grandmother wasn’t the only one who paid a high price for me. After watching the movie “Selma” not once, but twice last weekend, I was overwhelmed by the brutal and heart-wrenching sacrifices so many people made for me, and others, to gain the right to vote. Even long before the Selma to Montgomery marches and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 led by Martin Luther King Jr., many others made sacrifices so Americans could exercise their right to vote.
And how have we responded?
Last summer Snohomish County made headlines for having the lowest primary voter turnout in the state. A mere 25.6 percent of voters made the effort to fill out their ballots and mail them in. Attribute that to apathy in our political system, but I believe too many people sacrificed their time and even their lives for me to simply toss my ballot in the recycling bin.
Do we really think we’ve come so far as a society that the problems of 50 years ago are just a distant memory? If so, we need only watch or read the news to know we are as plagued by violence and crises today as our grandparents and great grandparents were in their day.
We do not have to live in the past in order to change the future, but we do have to look beyond our self-interests to the problems of those around us.
As Dr. King is quoted as saying, “An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.”
I have great hope not all is forgotten or so easily dismissed. Recently I attended several local schools’ Martin Luther King Jr. assemblies. Each one was moving and meaningful.
I was particularly struck by Mariner High School’s MLK event. I visit this school as often as I can because I see my younger self in these students. So I went to this event ready to share my thoughts on how these teens can overcome the disadvantages they face every day and build a successful future. But these students left me speechless — literally. Before I could utter one word of advice, every student speaker before me said it all first! Lose the hate. Stay in school and get the best education you can. Focus on your goals and dreams and never give up them. Respect yourself and those around you. Be engaged.
They get it. They realize they are students today and the leaders of tomorrow.
What about today’s leaders? It’s time for us as individuals and as a larger community to commit ourselves to examining the issues before us today and determining which sacrifices we’re willing to make for future generations. What do we want Snohomish County to look like in 50 years?
However you spend MLK day — at an event, watching “Selma” or recovering from Sunday’s Seahawks game, I hope you’ll commit yourself to thinking about the “broader concerns of all humanity” the other 364 days of the year.
John Lovick is the county executive for Snohomish County.
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