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Pictures from the 33rd annual Peace Breakfast

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Pictures from the 33rd annual Peace Breakfast

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Thirty third-annual Peace Breakfast celebrates King’s legacy

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Thirty third-annual Peace Breakfast celebrates King’s legacy

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Oregon State University celebrated the 33 rd anniversary of the Martin Luther King., Jr. Peace Breakfast on Monday, Jan. 19, in the Memorial Union Ballroom. A large crowd of OSU students, staff and faculty, as well as community members from Corvallis and around the Willamette Valley gathered to celebrate King's legacy with breakfast and a two-hour ceremony.

Keynote speaker, the Honorable Darleen Ortega of the Oregon Court of Appeals, is the first Latina to serve in the position. Ortega, who grew up in Banks, Ore., reminded the audience that Dr. King's dream is far from an achieved reality, and suggested that King's emphasis on shaking off complacency was still a call to action. She said that despite the advances made since the Civil Rights Movement, the work was far from over.

Each year several OSU community members are honored for their work in diversity and social justice issues. This year one student and one faculty member were presented awards during the breakfast.

The Phyllis S. Lee Award was created to honor Lee, the retired founding Director of the Office of Multicultural Affairs. The award recognizes a member of the OSU community who exemplifies Lee's commitment and dedication to social justice and the teachings of Martin Luther King, Jr. This year's winner was Janet Nishihara, interim associate provost for Academic Success and Engagement.

The Frances Dancy Hooks Award was created in 1994, when she and Benjamin Hooks visited Oregon State as keynote speakers for the King celebration. The award recognizes students, staff or faculty who exemplify Frances Dancy Hooks' work: building bridges across cultures, showing courage in promoting diversity, and someone who proudly "Walks the Talk." This year's winner was Chante Davis, a graduate student in Fisheries and Wildlife.

In addition, four OSU community members gave spoken word performances during the event, including Natalie Vega-Juarez, Ish Guevara, Luke Kawasaki and Luhui Whitebear.

Events honoring King continue this week. For a schedule of events: http://oregonstate.edu/oei/mlk-events

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Thirty third-annual Peace Breakfast celebrates King's legacy - LIFE@OSU

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Oregon State University celebrated the 33 rd anniversary of the Martin Luther King., Jr. Peace Breakfast on Monday, Jan. 19, in the Memorial Union Ballroom. A large crowd of OSU students, staff and faculty, as well as community members from Corvallis and around the Willamette Valley gathered to celebrate King's legacy with breakfast and a two-hour ceremony.

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                OSU’s 33rd annual MLK Celebration starts Monday
                
            
             
    
    

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                OSU’s 33rd annual MLK Celebration starts Monday
                
            
             
    
    

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One of the enduring lessons of the civil rights movement is the power of individuals to achieve social justice by working together.

In keeping with that idea, "Ordinary People, Extraordinary Change" is the theme of this year's Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration at Oregon State University, which will highlight to ability of everyday citizens to make a difference in their communities, their nation and the world.

"It's intended to convey that basically anyone can make change," said Kerstin Colon of OSU's Office of Equity and Inclusion, who chaired the planning committee for the event. "You don't have to be president, you don't have to be wealthy - everyday people can make change."

Kicking off the two-week commemoration of the slain civil rights leader's legacy will be a presentation by Kevin Rome, president of historically black Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri. The college was founded in 1866 by African-American Civil War veterans to educate newly freed slaves, and today the student body is 40 percent black.

Rome will speak at 2 p.m. Monday in the Horizon Room of OSU's Memorial Union, and at 3 p.m. he'll take part in a 90-minute panel discussion called "Creating Change."

Other panelists will include Larry Roper, the former vice provost for student affairs at OSU; Denson Chatfield, the new director of the university's Department of Public Safety; Brandi Douglas of University Housing & Dining Services; and Crystal Boson, an assistant professor in the Department of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies.

Like most of the nearly two dozen events that make up OSU's 33rd annual MLK celebration, Rome's talk is free and open to the public.

Among the other high points will be spoken-word performances, opportunities for community service, and a screening and discussion of "Selma," a new movie about the historic 1965 civil rights march in Alabama.

The annual Peace Breakfast is set for 9 a.m. Jan. 19 in the Memorial Union Ballroom. Judge Darlene Ortega of the Oregon Court of Appeals will give the keynote address, and the Phyllis S. Lee & Frances Dancy Hooks Coalition Builder Awards will be presented.

The cost to attend $10 for the general public, $6 for students and free for children 5 and under. Tickets may be available at the door, but this event regularly sells out. People interested in attending are advised to purchase tickets in advance at the MU Information Desk.

Reporter Bennett Hall can be reached at 541-758-9529 or bennett.hall@lee.net.

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OSU's 33rd annual MLK Celebration starts Monday

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One of the enduring lessons of the civil rights movement is the power of individuals to achieve social justice by working together. In keeping with that idea, "Ordinary People, Extraordinary Change" is the theme of this year's Martin Luther King Jr.

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MLK weeks facilitate change, benefit from student involvement

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MLK weeks facilitate change, benefit from student involvement

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The Daily Barometer is Oregon State's award-winning student-run newspaper which began in 1896.

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OSU volunteers proud to give back to honor MLK Day of Service

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OSU volunteers proud to give back to honor MLK Day of Service

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Saturday might be a day of relaxation as part of the three-day Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend for many, but Oregon State University freshman Yuriah Reed-Harris saw it as a perfect opportunity to give back.

"Being a person of color and being involved in a minority program at OSU, and with OSU doing a lot of things to highlight minorities and give them a chance to succeed, it was important to give something back," Reed-Harris, 18, said while taking a break from painting Saturday morning at Walnut Barn at Martin Luther King Jr. Park. "Everyone acknowledges Martin Luther King, but not many follow his example of giving back to people in a bigger way. To actually do work makes me feel like I'm doing something and that I have something to show for what I care about."

But Yuriah wasn't the only one. About 100 students took part in the OSU's MLK Day of Service volunteering at about 10 other sites around Corvallis. In addition to providing maintenance work at MLK Park and other parks in Corvallis, students and community volunteers took care of animals in need of homes at SafeHaven Humane Society, built housing as part of Habitat for Humanity and fed the homeless and those in need with Stone Soup.

For Ben Wong, 23, a volunteer at MLK Park and OSU master's student, it was important to provide a community service because Monday is an extra day off from school.

"I have an extra day off, so I've got to take an extra day to work," Wong said. "It's not even a whole day and I get so much out of it and it does something for the community. I think it's really cool to get to have the time to do something good."

The volunteers provided a much needed service for several community organizations, said Steve McGettigan, volunteer coordinator with the Corvallis Parks & Recreation Department.

"We had a lot of needs at the park this time of year and volunteering really varies widely here," he said. "Keeping up the parks in the winter means a lot of work and it was really nice to have so many people helping out."

Adaline Padlina, community outreach coordinator at SafeHaven, said the shelter always needs more volunteers and that the dozen students who helped out Saturday came at a great time.

"We love volunteers because there is always something we need for the animals," Padlina said. "But it's great to have so many people help. It's great for the animals to get used to new people, which makes them more adoptable. It's great for our staff because we have a constant need to get everything clean and get things ready. We have dozens of animals and they need care every day and that can be difficult with limited staff and right now we have a lot of animals looking for homes."

But the volunteer effort was great for many of the volunteers too, Padlina said.

"It gets them exposed to that animal shelter life and hopefully takes away some negative preconceptions people have about shelters and it's fun to help the animals," she said.

Volunteers Emily Boyer, 21, and Jesse Pettibone, 20, said they got more out of the volunteer effort than they expected - including a possible new addition to their homes as the two considered adopting a dog Saturday morning.

"When I first signed up I thought about staying home instead and relaxing. But some don't have that choice," Boyer said. "It's a privilege to have the time off and because of that, I wanted to do something more with my time. Coming and hanging out with awesome people and pets and getting to help them out sounded like a great way to spend that time."

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OSU volunteers proud to give back to honor MLK Day of Service

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Saturday might be a day of relaxation as part of the three-day Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend for many, but Oregon State University freshman Yuriah Reed-Harris saw it as a perfect opportunity to give back.

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OSU breakfast honors late civil rights leader

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OSU breakfast honors late civil rights leader

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Oregon State University and community members gathered Monday in the Memorial Union ballroom to honor the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who would have turned 86 last Thursday.

King was born Jan. 15, 1929. His gift for oratory and inspiration, which helped to spark the civil rights movement of the 1960s, ensured his legacy as a leader long after his assassination April 4, 1968.

Although known for nonviolence that was in keeping with is Christian principles, King also impressed some who attended the breakfast with his "radical" innovation.

Oregon Court of Appeals Judge Darleen Ortega said she spent days listening to King's speeches and reading his writings in preparation for delivering her speech at the annual Peace Breakfast in his honor.

"I was struck anew by what a radical Dr. King was. He was so radical; I'm amazed we have a national holiday in his honor," she told an audience of around 300 assembled in the ballroom.

Ortega explained that in the decades since his death, his public image has changed, and people forget how ground-breaking his views were on ending racial discrimination and improving the lives of people living in poverty were for his times - and remain to this day.

Ortega said King had the ability to wake people up to the injustices around them. That kind of inspiration still is needed today, she said.

The Peace Breakfast, hosted by OSU for 33 years near King's birthday, is one among many events planned each year for two weeks in January to mark King's legacy.

"One of the hazards of our time is we think his words no longer apply to us," she said. "We tend to overestimate how far we've come."

However, she said the U.S. has not solved the problem of marginalization, and referenced statistics that people of color remain disproportionately poor, incarcerated and subject to police brutality.

"It's not time to throw a celebration for how far we've come," she said.

Ortega, the first Latina Oregon Court of appeals judge, said that people need to work to become more "maladjusted" to the persistent inequalities in U.S. society.

Ortega said that King believed social change was affected by many people working together to end such injustice.

Kerstin Colón, who headed the committee that planned the event, said the theme of the event is that ordinary people can make extraordinary changes.

"(The event) celebrates the legacy of Dr. King, and as we see in the news, a lot of the things he was fighting for are still being fought for today," she said.

OSU President Ed Ray said events such as the Peace breakfast are important to the OSU community as it continues to work for social justice.

Anthony Rimel can be reached at anthony.rimel@lee.net, 541758-9526, or via Twitter @anthonyrimel.

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african-american civil rights movement 1955 1968

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OSU breakfast honors late civil rights leader

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Oregon State University and community members gathered Monday in the Memorial Union ballroom to honor the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who would have turned 86 last Thursday. King was born Jan. 15, 1929. His gift for oratory and inspiration, which helped to spark the civil rights movement of the 1960s, ensured his legacy as a leader long after his assassination April 4, 1968.

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“A small, committed few people can change the world.” - Dr. Kevin Rome, President of Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Mo.

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The Daily Barometer is Oregon State's award-winning student-run newspaper which began in 1896.

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"I Don't Know What to Do With Good White People"

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I don't know what to do with good white people.

I've been surrounded by good white people my whole life. Good white people living in my neighborhood, who returned our dog when he got loose; good white teachers in elementary school who pushed books into my hands; good white professors at Stanford, a Bay Area bastion of goodwhiteness, who recommended me M.F.A. programs where I met good white writers, liberal enough for a Portlandia sketch.

I should be grateful for this. Who, in generations of my family, has ever been surrounded by so many good white people? My mother was born to sharecroppers in Louisiana; she used to measure her feet with a piece of string because they could not try on shoes in the store. She tells me of a white policeman who humiliated her mother by forcing her to empty her purse on the store counter just so he could watch her few coins spiral out.

Two summers ago, my mother showed me the welfare reports written about her family. The welfare officer, a white woman, observed my family with a careful, anthropological eye. She described the children, including my mother, as "nice and clean." She asked personal questions (did my grandmother have a boyfriend?) and wrote her findings in a detached tone. She wondered why my grandmother, an illiterate Black mother of nine living in the Jim Crow South, struggled to find a steady job. Maybe, she wrote in her loopy scrawl, my grandmother wasn't searching hard enough.

This faded report is the type of official document a historian might consult if he were re-constructing the story of my family. The author, this white welfare officer, writes as if she is an objective observer, but she tells a well-worn story of Black women who refuse to work and instead depend on welfare. Occasionally, her clinical tone breaks down. Once, she notes that my mother is pretty. She probably considered herself a good white person.

In the wake of the Darren Wilson non-indictment, I've only deleted one racist Facebook friend. This friend, as barely a friend as a high school classmate can be, re-posted a rant calling rioters niggers. (She was not a good white person.) Most of my white friends have responded to recent events with empathy or outrage. Some have joined protests. Others have posted Criming While White stories, a hashtag that has been criticized for detracting from Black voices. Look at me, the hashtag screams, I know that I am privileged. I am a good white person. Join me and remind others that you are a good white person too.

Over the past two weeks, I've seen good white people congratulate themselves for deleting racist friends or debating family members or performing small acts of kindness to Black people. Sometimes I think I'd prefer racist trolling to this grade of self-aggrandizement. A racist troll is easy to dismiss. He does not think decency is enough. Sometimes I think good white people expect to be rewarded for their decency. We are not like those other white people. See how enlightened and aware we are? See how we are good?

Over the past two weeks, I have fluctuated between anger and grief. I feel surrounded by Black death. What a privilege, to concern yourself with seeming good while the rest of us want to seem worthy of life.

When my father was a young man, he was arrested at gunpoint. He was a Deputy District Attorney at the time, driving home one night from bible study when LAPD pulled him over. A traffic violation, he'd thought, until officers swarmed his car with shotguns aimed at his head. The cops refused to look in his wallet at his badge. They cuffed him and threw him on the curb.

My father is mostly thankful that he'd stayed calm. In his shock, he had done nothing. That's what he believes saved his life.

I think about this while I watch Eric Garner die. For months, I avoided the video, until we arrived at another officer non-indictment. Now I've seen the video of Garner's death, as well as a second video I find even more disturbing. This second video, taken immediately after Garner has been killed by a banned chokehold, shows officers attempting to speak to him, asking him to respond to EMTs. They do not yet know that he is dead, and there's something about this moment, officers shuffling around as an EMT seeks a pulse, that is so bafflingly and frustratingly human, so different from the five officers lunging and wrangling Garner to the ground.

In the wake of this non-indictment, a surprising coalition of detractors has emerged. Not just black and brown students hitting the streets in protest but conservative stalwarts, like Bill O'Reilly or John Boehner, criticizing the lack of justice. Even George W. Bush weighed in, calling the grand jury's decision "sad." But even though many find Garner's death wrong, others refuse to believe that race played a role. His death was the result of overzealous policing, a series of bad individual choices. It would have happened to a white guy. The same way in Cleveland, a 12-year-old Black boy named Tamir Rice was killed by officers for playing with a toy gun. An unfortunate tragedy, but not racial. Any white kid playing with a realistic-looking toy gun would have been killed too.

Darren Wilson has been unrepentant about taking Mike Brown's life. He insists he could not have done anything differently. Daniel Pantaleo has offered condolences to the Garner family, admitting that he "feels very bad" about Garner's death.

"It is never my intention to harm anyone," he said.

I don't know which is worse, the unrepentant killer or the man who insists to the end that he meant well.

A year ago, outside the Orange County airport, a white woman cut in front of me at the luggage check. She had been standing next to me, and soon as the luggage handlers called next, she swooped up her things and went to the counter. She'd cut me because I was black. Or maybe because I was young. Maybe she was running late for her flight or maybe she was just rude. She would've cut me if I had been a white woman like her. She would've cut me if I had been anyone.

Of course, the woman ended up on my flight, and of course, she was seated right next to me. Before the flight took off, she turned to me and said, "I'm sorry if I cut you earlier. I didn't see you standing there."

I often hear good white people ask why people of color must make everything about race, as if we enjoy considering racism as a motivation. I wish I never had to cycle through these small interactions and wonder: Am I overthinking? Am I just being paranoid? It's exhausting.

"It was a lot simpler in the rural South," my mother tells me. "White people let you know right away where you stood."

The problem is that you can never know someone else's intentions. And sometimes I feel like I live in a world where I'm forced to parse through the intentions of people who have no interest in knowing mine. A grand jury believed that Darren Wilson was a good officer doing his job. This same grand jury believed than an eighteen-year-old kid in a monstrous rage charged into a hailstorm of bullets toward a cop's gun.

Wilson described Michael Brown as a black brute, a demon. No one questioned Michael Brown's intentions. A stereotype does not have complex, individual motivations. A stereotype, treated as such, can be forced into whatever action we expect.

I spent a four hour flight trying not to wonder about the white woman's intentions. But why would she think about mine? She didn't even see me.

In elementary school, my older sister came home one day crying. She had learned about the Ku Klux Klan in class that day and she was afraid that men in white hoods would attack us. My father told her there was nothing to worry about.

"If a Klansman sat at this table right now," he said, "I'd laugh right in his face."

My mother tells stories of Klansmen riding at night, of how her grandmother worried when the doctor's son-a white boy-visited her youngest sister because she feared the Klan would burn down their home. When I was a child, I only saw the Klan in made-for-TV civil rights movies or on theatrical episodes of Jerry Springer. My parents knew what we would later learn, that in the nineties, in our California home, surrounded by good white people, we had more to fear than racism that announces itself.

We all want to believe in progress, in history that marches forward in a neat line, in transcended differences and growing acceptance, in how good the good white people have become. So we expect racism to appear, cartoonishly evil like a Disney villain. As if a racist cop is one who wakes in the morning, twirling his mustache and rubbing his hands together as he plots how to destroy black lives.

I don't think Darren Wilson or Daniel Pantaleo set out to kill Black men. I'm sure the cops who arrested my father meant well. But what good are your good intentions if they kill us?

When my friends and I discuss people we dislike, we often end our conversations with, "But he means well."

We always land here, because we want to affirm ourselves as fair, non-judgmental people who examine a person not only by what he does but also by what he intends to. After all, aren't all of us standing in the gap between who we are and who we try to be? Isn't it human to allow those we dislike-even those who harm us-a residence in this space as well?

"You know what? He means well," we say. We lean on this, and the phrase is so condescending, so cloyingly sweet, so hollow, that I'd almost rather anyone say anything else about me than how awful I am despite how good I intend to be.

I think about this during a car ride last weekend with my dad, where he tells me what happened once the cops finally realized they had arrested the wrong man. They picked him up from the curb, brushed him off.

"Sorry, buddy," an officer said, unlocking his handcuffs.

They'd made an honest mistake. He'd fit the description. Well, of course he did. The description is always the same. The police escorted my father onto the road. My father, not yet my father, drove all the way home without remembering to turn his headlights on.

Brit Bennett recently earned her M.F.A. in creative writing at the the Helen Zell Writers' Program at the University of Michigan. She is currently a Zell Postgraduate Fellow, where she is working on her first novel.
Illustration by Jim Cooke.

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I Don't Know What to Do With Good White People

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I don't know what to do with good white people. I've been surrounded by good white people my whole life. Good white people living in my neighborhood, who returned our dog when he got loose; good white teachers in elementary school who pushed books into my hands; good white professors at Stanford, a Bay Area bastion of goodwhiteness, who recommended me M.F.A.

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Great opinion article on the Dec 6th protest in Corvallis by our own Brandi Douglas

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We, the few members of the Black community who attended the Saturday, Dec. 6 protest at the Benton County Courthouse, have some thoughts and reflections we would like to share about the protest and the article published on the Gazette-Times website titled, "Police brutality protesters block traffic on Van Buren Bridge."

First, we appreciate the efforts of the organizers for putting the protest together; it takes a great deal of courage to take a stand against racism and injustice. We would also like to state that there was a community dialogue in response to the grand jury decision in Ferguson, Missouri on the Oregon State University campus on Tuesday, Nov. 25.

The voice of the local Black community was a central part of organizing that dialogue and other events, such as the conversations with police hosted by the NAACP. Unfortunately, the same could not be said for Saturday's protest. We feel that there was not a strong effort to connect with many of the OSU Black student organizations or those that actively and historically support Black people like the NAACP. In fact, the members of the Black community who attended the protest, barely knew about it until late Friday, Dec. 5.

During the four-hour exercise of our First Amendment Rights, as participants, it became more apparent to us that the goals and messages of the protest were not clear.

We would like to clarify that we are not anti-police; we are against police brutality, racism and an unfair justice system. We believe that all unarmed citizens - especially unarmed Black citizens - are entitled to survive an interaction with police officers without suffering lethal consequences. We want to show that all lives - particularly the lives of Black men, women and children - matter.

Regrettably, our lives and livelihoods were unconsciously put at risk when some protesters decided to take to the streets to block traffic and the Van Buren Bridge. This type of civil disobedience was not properly announced ahead of time, nor that it was the intent of the demonstration. It was done spontaneously and without fully comprehending the risk for Black community members in attendance.

Finally, the article written by the Gazette-Times covering the protest never gave voice to the complexities of the march. The article made assumptions of the racial identity of the protesters interviewed without asking, and misquoted many of those involved. The focus of the story fell squarely on the small group who remained on the bridge instead of the reason why many of us - including the few members of the Black community - felt compelled to come out and protest.

In fact, there was a group of us who did not stay on the bridge; we continued to march into downtown so that Corvallis could hear our concerns, witness our stance and observe our solidarity.

Throughout this entire planning process, the voice of the local Black community in general has not been included. The voices of the members of the Black community in attendance were not heard. In the case of the Gazette-Times story, these voices have been generally suppressed.

We believe that the effort to end injustice require the partnerships and collective action of all lived experiences, thoughts and voices. We, the few members of the Black community who attended, have begun the effort to connect with the Corvallis and OSU community to foster dialogue and to develop a strategic plan for further action moving forward.

Brandi Douglas of Corvallis wrote this on behalf of the Black community.

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no strong effort to connect with black student

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As I see it: Bringing voice to the voiceless

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We, the few members of the Black community who attended the Saturday, Dec. 6 protest at the Benton County Courthouse, have some thoughts and reflections we would like to share about the protest and the article published on the Gazette-Times website titled, "Police brutality protesters block traffic on Van Buren Bridge."