San Diego residents and local leaders gathered Friday morning to honor the past, celebrate the present and prepare for future challenges at the 40th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Human Dignity Awards breakfast.
Many of them acknowledged the urgency of those challenges, just three days before both the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday and the second presidential inauguration of Donald Trump, who campaigned on racist messages and has pledged rollbacks of racial diversity efforts.
The event, hosted by the Jackie Robinson Family YMCA, pays tribute to King’s life and work and bestows the Human Dignity Award on people or groups who have shown commitment to his values.
This year, it honored John E. Warren, the local pastor and publisher of the Black-owned newspaper Voice & Viewpoint, as well as the Southeast Disaster Response Team — a group of nonprofits that mobilized recovery efforts following devastating flooding last January.
Those nonprofits include the Harvey Family Foundation, the Jackie Robinson Y, Pillars of the Community, The Urban Collaborative Project, JIREH Providers, Hip Hop Health & Wellness 5K, PHATCAMP and Urban Leadership Development Institute.
Following the January floods, which displaced thousands of families in predominantly underserved and Black and brown communities, the Southeast Disaster Response Team collected donations, helped residents line up temporary housing and provided meals to people staying in hotels using county vouchers.
They also helped cleaned homes and are now helping rebuild.
“Dr. Martin Luther King once asked, ‘What are you doing for others?’ That question has guided every step of our journey,” said Armon Harvey, founder of the Harvey Family Foundation. “It reminds us of the unyielding fight for justice, equality and the dignity of every human being.”
John E. Warren, who also received the Human Dignity Award, is the publisher of the San Diego Voice & Viewpoint newspaper and has been a steadfast part of San Diego’s media industry for more than 25 years.
He is also an Army veteran, the president of the Black-owned media group Warren Communications and the co-founder and senior pastor of the Eagles Nest Christian Worship Center.
The awards have been given since the event’s inception in 1986 — the same year Martin Luther King Jr. Day became a federal holiday, nearly two decades after the civil rights leader’s assassination.
At Friday’s breakfast, local actor Rhys Green performed a reenactment of the “I Have a Dream” speech King delivered to more than 200,000 demonstrators at the March on Washington in 1963.
“I was at the March on Washington when Dr. King gave that speech,” Warren told the audience, adding, “it is up to us to make the dream a reality.”
It will be hard work, award recipients and speakers acknowledged.
“On Monday… there’s going to be a tragedy taking place, and we’ve gotta deal with people who want to do away with everything Dr. King stood for,” said Pastor Terry Wayne Brooks, the event’s keynote speaker, who leads the congregation at the Bayview Church of San Diego.
For Dee Sanford, the event chairperson of the Jackie Robinson Y, those obstacles make such events all the more important — reminders of King’s legacy and the continuing struggle for civil rights.
“I’m disappointed but not dissuaded, because I know that my father fought this battle, and his father fought this battle,” she said after the event. “You just have to be prepared to fight … Each family that’s going to make a difference takes the responsibility to prepare the next generation.”
