The Presidential Transition Team did a great job encouraging community service as a way of marking Martin Luther King Day. They realized that good service involves discussion, planning, and reflection--not just action. To encourage reflection, they posted an online toolkit for people who wanted to facilitate discussions after their local MLK Day Service activity. But everything was very rushed before the Inauguration. The toolkit went online just a couple of days before Martin Luther King Day and has since disappeared. I don't think it was used much.
Next year, there could be serious effort to encourage public discussions of issues, not only on King Day, but also on Presidents' Day, Memorial Day, Earth Day, Cesar Chavez Day, and other formal or informal national holidays. That effort could involve neutral discussion guides and a site where groups could log and share their conclusions.
Comments (1)
This idea touched me immediately. It could be combined with a national truth & reconciliation day that celebrates Martin Luther King while acknowledging that he was probably killed by a combination of FBI and Army snipers (see Act of State and my review at Amazon).