Speak Your Truth, Pursue Your Dreams and Serve Others on Martin Luther King Jr. Day

This year will mark 56 years since Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and shared a simple, but powerful dream of a world with equality and justice for all people regardless of race, creed, religion, education, status or age. This speech, passionately delivered to an assembled multitude of 250,000, was about guaranteeing the rights afforded to all citizens and enshrined in the United States Constitution.

Martin Luther King Jr. preached patience, kindness and hope for a better society, for a world where anybody had the ability to achieve their dreams through hard work and perseverance; and hope for a country in which equality wasn’t a tarnished word, but a true philosophy. Dr. King was assassinated before he was able to see his dream come true. If he were still alive today, I think he would see that much progress has been made toward realization of his dream. However, there is still much more to be done and it is our responsibility to accomplish that.

Many people choose to honor MLK Day by volunteering in their community and helping their neighbors. Whatever you choose to do with your day, I urge you to practice kindness and put in hard work toward bettering humanity, our community or our State.

As Mayor of the Town of East Hartford, the words and philosophies of Martin Luther King Jr. inspire me to create a more cohesive and engaged community and to pursue that ideal with every decision made, working toward making this community better for our children and our children’s children.