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Martin Luther King (MLK) Jr. Day 2025 marks the holiday’s 40th observance. The theme, “Mission Possible: Protecting Freedom, Justice, and Democracy in the Spirit of Nonviolence 365,” is challenging in this politically polarized era. With this new presidency, we are called to reaffirm our values and hold them against a hard reality in order to provide a promise for future generations.
Americans on the margins have the most to lose now in a country eroding, if not dismantling, decades-long civil rights gains that allowed protection and participation in an evolving multicultural democracy.
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Moral leadership played a profound role in King’s justice work. He argued that authentic moral leadership must involve itself in the situations of all who are damned, disinherited, disrespected, and dispossessed. He also believed that moral leadership must be part of a participatory government that is feverishly working to dismantle any existing discriminatory laws that prevent full participation in the fight to advance democracy.
However, if King were among us today, he would say that it is not enough to look outside ourselves to see the places where society is broken. It is not enough to talk about institutions and workplaces that fracture and separate people based on race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and other experiential lines. Oftentimes, these institutions and workplaces are broken, dysfunctional, and wounded in the same ways we are — the structures we’ve created mirror not who we want to be but who we are.
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“If you want to see love, be love. If you want to receive compassion, be compassionate. If you want respect, you have to show respect,” Bernice King said in an interview promoting her 2022 children’s book It Starts With Me.
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When we use our gifts to serve others, as King has taught us, we shift the paradigm of personal brokenness to personal healing. We also shift the paradigm of looking for moral leadership from outside of ourselves to within ourselves, thus realizing that we are not only the agents of change in society but also the moral leaders we have been looking for.
Therefore, our job in keeping King’s dream alive is to remember that our longing for social justice remains also inextricably tied to our longing for personal healing — and it starts with you.
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[from the article “Looking for the next Martin Luther King Jr.? Here’s where to find him…” in LGBTQ Nation]
The Little Prince and the Fox 