MAPLEWOOD, NJ — The South Orange-Maplewood Community Coalition on Race will present the 16th annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Observance on Monday, Jan. 16, at 2 p.m. at Columbia High School, 17 Parker Ave. in Maplewood. The event is free and open to all. Hundreds of SOMA residents and friends from neighboring communities will gather to honor King through music, dance, a sharing of interfaith readings, and an affirmation of King’s call to action and service.
LaShawn Y. Warren, vice president and general counsel at the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, will serve as guest speaker. Warren has worked as a public interest attorney for nearly 20 years. Before the institute, she served as vice president of policy development and programming at the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy and she worked as oversight counsel for the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary. In addition to Warren’s legal work on civil rights issues, she is a graduate of Yale Divinity School where she focused on ethics, faith and social movements, and effective paradigms for building healthy urban communities.
The reception and volunteer fair will follow the presentation at 3:30 p.m. in the cafeteria. The fair gives members of the community information and ways to serve from local community groups, including those housing and feeding the poor, mentoring and tutoring youth, and those serving other social causes. There will also be projects with instant impact that can be completed right then and there. Food pantry donations are encouraged and welcome.
For the fourth year, the Coalition on Race is also sponsoring the Luminary Project, in which the CCR envisions 1,000 homes across the two towns alight with outdoor luminaries as a sign of peace and solidarity with King’s vision. For more information or advance luminary purchase, visit http://www.twotowns.org/2016/12/01/the-luminary-project/
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