Daniel Wayne Lee, a member of the group planning Saturday’s Martin Luther King Day celebration at the Senior Center, made one of this week’s most incisive observations:
“Many people are familiar with Dr. King’s ‘I Have a Dream Speech,’ but they know much less about all of the good works that he did.”
Whether the organizers of King Day at the Senior Center are going to explore Mr. Lee’s well-taken point remains muddied on the day before the event.
In the ninth year of King Day in Culver City – which used to be a Saturday and Sunday celebration – the slender, steadily shrinking, less-than-five-hours party remains the community’s most awkwardly launched annual event.
Not only is King Day embarrassingly under-promoted, the program lacks imagination, it is woefully bereft of star appeal.
Underplanned, unfocused, barely breathing, uncreatively stitched together without detectable thematic binding.
The weak, garbled publicity must have been written by a person opposed to King Day.
Except for symbolically honoring what would have been Dr. King’s 85th birthday – 46 years after his assassination in Memphis – what motivation do people have for spending part of their Saturday inside the Senior Center?
The appeal of the program seems limited to close relatives.
If there is an attraction it has been hidden.
Hardly an appropriate legacy for the Heart of Screenland.
The clumsily, mysteriously formulated theme – “What Did Dr. King Say and What Will We Do?” – leaves an observer open-mouthed. Is anyone defining it, acknowledging it? No mention is made of if or how the theme will be developed.
There is no indication anywhere in the miniscule pre-event publicity that any speaker will trace this notion.
The doors will open at 10:30, but the first passively described agenda item, “Common Peace, a short video and a presentation by Teen Center students,” hardly augurs promisingly for the slim agenda.
When organizers announce a short presentation, they mean it. This is listed for 15 minutes.
Four more events are listed before the final King Day attraction at 3:20 – actor Gerald Rivers delivering an unidentified speech of Dr. King’s. The room will be dark before 4 o’clock.
Here is the balance of the program:
11:30 – “Musical Inspiration,” will be brief, 10 minutes. It will feature one Rickie Byars Beckwith, the music and arts director of the Agape International Spiritual Center.
[img]2400|right|Dr. Michael Bernard Beckwith||no_popup[/img]At 11:40, Dr. Michael Bernard Beckwith, founder of the Agape International Spiritual Center 28 years ago, will give the keynote address on an undisclosed subject. Called a “nonaligned, trans-religious progressive,” he is co-founder of the Assn. for Global Thought, an organization dedicated to planetary healing and transformation. At the Agape website, it is said reported that in the 1970s, Dr. Beckwith began an inward journey into the teachings of East and West, and today teaches universal truth principles found in the New Thought-Ancient Wisdom tradition of spirituality.
At 12:40, there will be a 40-minute panel discussion.
For two hours, starting at 1:20, a documentary, “King: A Filmed Record…Montgomery to Memphis,” will be screened.
