Gov. Rod Blagojevich said Monday that a new state commission will document the gap between the “haves and the have-nots” in Illinois “so we can measure what we need to do better.”
Blagojevich’s announcement came at the annual PUSH-Excel scholarship breakfast in the Chicago Hilton and Towers honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., one of several events across the Chicago area commemorating the late civil rights leader on the national holiday marking his birth.
“It isn’t enough that we just come together every single year and honor him,” Blagojevich said. “We now have to pick up the gauntlet and pursue those ideals and principles and turn those into reality.”
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The governor told the audience that “we will come back next year and report to you the things we have to do to make our state and our country truly the place that Dr. King gave his life for.”
Blagojevich offered no details, and his aides were unable to provide additional information. The idea stemmed from a conversation that Blagojevich had a few days ago with Rev. Jesse Jackson, president of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, a Blagojevich spokeswoman said.
Illinois Senate President Emil Jones (D-Chicago) said later that the commission would report annually, establishing a baseline of information initially and assessing progress thereafter.
The panel will examine such things as employment, access to health care, discrimination and the gap between the rich and the poor, he said.
“The reports can be a benchmark for programs and budgeting where we need to focus to resolve the disparities that still exist in society,” he said.
The commission’s research will cut across racial lines, Jones said, focusing on the poor and underprivileged.
At Governors State University in south suburban University Park, meanwhile, about 200 people attended the 5th annual Dr. Martin Luther King Celebration, where Rev. Willie Barrow, a former field organizer for King who marched with him in 1965 in Selma, Ala., urged action from members of the audience.
“I’m tired of meeting and eating,” Barrow said. “We’ve got to act. There is so much to act upon.”
King “got involved,” she said. “He was committed. We have to begin to know each other. We need to start relating to each other. … It’s time for us to wake up and get up and stand up.”
In the western suburbs, more than 50 braved bone-chilling temperatures to march almost a mile from the People’s Resource Center in Wheaton–where they donated food for the needy–to the Second Baptist Church of Wheaton.
Zady Odom, 77, of Wheaton brought her four grandchildren along on the march, which is now in its third year.
“I made the kids remember, `He paved the way for you,'” Odom said. “`You didn’t get here yourself.’ And I think they’re getting the picture.”
At Lake Forest College, guest speaker J.W. Smith recalled how, at age 9, he could hear wailing and screaming throughout his South Side neighborhood when word spread that King was dead.
“The windows were open that night,” said Smith, director of graduate education at Ohio University. “We all poured out into the street and were crying and hugging. … Today I have spent this day thinking about his legacy and why he still matters.”
About 100 gathered in the college’s Lily Reid Holt Memorial Chapel on Monday to hear the recollections of Smith, a minister, college professor and gospel singer who has been blind since birth.
Smith encouraged his audience to “keep up the pressure by making progress.”
“It’s a lot more difficult to discriminate against somebody, to keep somebody down, if they are showing progress, a commitment,” he said, to murmurs of agreement from a racially diverse crowd.
In Hoffman Estates, Hycel B. Taylor II, senior pastor at Pilgrim Baptist Church in Chicago and former president of Operation PUSH, told about 100 people attending a commemorative breakfast that King would be troubled by divisions in the African-American community.
“We don’t walk together, stand together like we used to,” Taylor said. “We need to move beyond race relations and move towards power relations. … It’s not about what white people are doing to us, but what we’re doing to ourselves.”
Candace Williams, 11, of Schaumburg, who is African-American, attended the breakfast with her friend, Jenny Dolan, 11, of Schaumburg, who is white. The two attend Collins Elementary School in Schaumburg.
After the breakfast, Candace said that without King, she and Dolan wouldn’t be allowed to be friends and probably wouldn’t go to the same school. “Without Martin Luther King, Jenny and I would go to different schools. Or if we went to the same school, I’d be sitting in the back of the bus,” she said.
At the Salvation Army Uptown Service Center, 1025 W. Sunnyside Ave., employees of the law firm of Lord, Bissell & Brook showed up dressed in old, faded blue jeans and tattered tennis shoes. For the second year in a row, the Chicago-based law firm has used King’s birthday to reach out to the community.
Last year, volunteers served lunch to the homeless in the center. This year, they would be painting its dining hall.
“For us … it would be the wrong thing to do and would not be honoring King’s message to stay home and sleep in,” said Dan Schlessinger, managing partner of the law firm.
Children in the South Side YMCA, 6330 S. Stony Island Ave., honored King with a skit highlighting his message.
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One by one, elementary school age children stood and told at least one fact about King.
“Martin Luther King Jr. fought for civil rights,” one said.
“Dr. King preached about respect and justice,” declared another.
“Martin Luther King was a great man. He helped black people and white people stop fighting,” asserted a third.
Jeff Thomas, program director of the YMCA’s after-school program, said he chose Monday’s activity because he wanted the children to understand the importance of the movement King led. “Unfortunately, today a lot of kids don’t know the gist of what Martin Luther King was about,” he said. “When I think about Martin Luther King for myself, I don’t like to limit him to just a dream.”