Trump inauguration. Time of turmoil, testing resolve
By Nayaba Arinde
Editor at Large
“We can’t slow up and have our dignity and self-respect,” Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King declared at Rev. Gardner Taylor’s Brooklyn Concord Baptist Church in March 1956. “In our generation, something has happened to the Negro. He has decided to reevaluate himself, and he is coming to see that he is somebody.”
As the Montgomery Bus Boycott was simultaneously uniting the disenfranchised Black community and terrifying a taken-by-surprise white status quo across the United States, King spoke to the eager crowd of 2,500, saying that the people should be inspired to “Press on and keep pressing. If you can’t fly, run; if you can’t run, walk; if you can’t walk–crawl.”
The January 15th, 2025 96th birthday observation of Dr. Martin Luther King Day takes place on January 20th, 2025. It is the same date that President-Elect Donald Trump will be inaugurated. He promises the deportation of millions of immigrants beginning on day one, in less than two weeks, with predicted protests against promised polarizing policies occurring on the same day as rallies and day-of-action activity in support of an MLK progressive people’s ideal.
“Dr. King would have tried to work with Trump,” Clinical Psychologist Ruth Smith told Our Time Press. “I believe because of his ‘turn the other cheek’ philosophy, he would have tried to find some middle ground. But, even though Trump might decide to work with someone like Dr. King, his ego is so out of control that he would fight even against himself to reach any sort of compromise. So perhaps Dr. King might instead say, “Forget it; there’s no working with this guy; he’s on a mission to wreak havoc everywhere.”
Meanwhile, even though he is a Queens-born Native New Yorker, there is no guarantee that NYC will be the beneficiary of policy, strategy, and federal legislation of his administration.
Some political pundits have observed that the November 2024 election result showed that Black Democrat supporters of then-presidential candidate Vice-President Kamala Harris discovered that a perceived alliance collapsed in spectacular fashion.
In NYC, Mayor Eric Adams scheduled his State of the City address at Harlem’s Apollo for today, Thursday, January 9th, to lay out what he feels have been the pros and cons of his three-plus year administration. This, as prosecutors announced this week that there will be new charges, alongside the five felonies, as he awaits an April court date for alleged bribery and corruption.
In the interim, the much-fought-for Dr. King federal holiday–seen by advocates as not a day off, but a day on with public civics events, protests, and rallies, particularly in the wake of the alleged murder of Robert Brooks, who died on December 10, 2024, by Department of Corrections and Community Supervision officers at Marcy Correctional Facility in Marcy, Oneida County.
Attorney General Letitia James, who released the video of the brutal and deadly beating by 14 correction officers and other personnel, citing however, “internal conflicts checks,” days later added, “After much consideration, research, and review, my office decided to recuse itself from the investigation of the correction officers involved in the events preceding the death of Mr. Robert Brooks… to protect the integrity of the investigation, and to ensure accountability and justice for Mr. Brooks.”
The AG’s office of Division of State Counsel “by law, represents state agencies in legal matters, including the Department of Corrections and correction officers.” As grassroots organizations responded with uproar, James added, “Four of the correction officers under investigation in the Robert Brooks matter are currently defendants in other matters and are being represented by lawyers in the Office of the Attorney General.”
James continued, “Even the possibility or mere appearance of a conflict could tie up a potential prosecution in lengthy legal challenges or get a potential prosecution outright dismissed. And I will not allow justice to be delayed or denied because of a conflict.” Activists were not appeased, demanding that Gov. Kathy Hochul immediately fire the 13 officers and one nurse involved. And she did. But, the December 12th Movement originally organized actions to demand that Hochul and James “arrest, indict, prosecute, and incarcerate them for murder for hate crimes, and terrorist acts.”
The community advocacy group slammed the “frenzied slaughter” and said, “After a jury acquitted Daniel Penny of the murder of his son, Andre Zachary, the father of Jordan Neely said, ‘We have got to do something,’ The question facing the Black community is ‘What are we going to do?”
On Tuesday this week, the “data-driven organization, the NYPD, again applied precision policing in 2024,” saying crime is down by 3%. Many New Yorkers remain skeptical, citing; recent murders, assaults, stabbings, shootings, and bloody violence on the subway, including the horrendous deadly arson on the Brooklyn F train, the subway train killing of Jordan Neeley by the recently-acquitted Daniel Penny, the fatal stabbing in a Harlem deli over a sandwich, Brownsville police chasing down and shooting a person over fare evasion on the Sutter Avenue L train; and gun and knife violence a constant threat, and mental illness presenting on the streets every day, and every way.
What would Dr. King do? Or, with his centenary being celebrated this year – Malcolm X, too?
Homelessness is up 18% nationwide, in the long shadow of the rumored warehousing and proposed selling of public housing by a number of private entities. Amidst an affordable housing crisis, The Coalition for the Homeless said, “There are now more people homeless in New York City than at any time since the Great Depression of the 1930s. In March 2024, 146,547 people slept each night in NYC shelters.”
They estimated that “more than 350,000 people were without homes in NYC in March 2024… 69 percent of those in shelters were members of homeless families, including 48,304 children.”
What would Dr. King do?
Licensed social worker Ruth Smith told Our Time Press that, “This about-to-be-president-again is unstable, and anything can happen. He is out to fulfill his agenda, and he is surrounded by yes men who will go along with absolutely anything he suggests. No one can tell him no, and he wants the world to know he is in charge.
People should just prepare for what’s coming. Get all your situations together because he may plan to hurt New York just because he can. I don’t want people to panic, but I do want them to be aware.”
In preparation for January 20th protests nationwide, New York City gears up for a Washington Square Park 11:00 a.m. rally.
Two days before, on Saturday, January 18th, at 495 Martin Luther King Boulevard, Newark, the People’s Organization for Progress (POP) will host its annual March to observe the 96th birth anniversary of “the immortal champion of Civil Rights, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.”
Participants are being asked to assemble at the new Martin Luther King Statue, acknowledging the theme of ‘The Martin Luther King Jr. March of Resistance’, launching “mass actions to protest and challenge the Agenda of President-elect Donald Trump, an agenda that includes pointed efforts to roll back Women’s Rights, Civil Rights, Immigrant Rights, Free Speech, and others.”
Lawrence Hamm, POP’s founding chairman, said, “We are having this march not just to honor the achievements of Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement, but to recommit ourselves to the ideals and objectives for which they stood and to demonstrate our determination to resist the efforts of the incoming Trump Administration to continue to turn back the clock on the past eighty years of racial and social progress.”
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