MLK Day (and a Special Tech Challenge)
BY Nancy Scola | Monday, January 18 2010
This is more or less a day away from the blog for us at techPresident. As we celebrate Martin Luther King Day, it's worth noting that the Internet provides an absolute wealth of multimedia material that helps to flesh out the day from a simple historic holiday to its rightful place as an opportunity to reflect on America's amazing and complicated journey. To get started, check out the YouTube footage of some of King's famous and lesser known speeches. Here's the text of the "I Have a Dream" speech. And then you might take a moment to read the remarkable letter King wrote to his fellow clergymen while he was locked in a Birmingham jail, the one in which he answered those who thought he was pushing for too much, too soon.
Of course, today isn't only about what's been done. It's about what we all can do to make our vision of the world real, whatever that vision might be. Martin Luther King's name might be the one used to mark the holiday, but any honest understanding of the day acknowledges that his strength came from being part of a collection of sometimes like-minded and often differing souls. It's probably fair to say that Martin Luther King Day is, as much as anything else, about collective action, about the perfecting of human experience that can come about when good-intentioned people engage, debate, and do the hard, hard work that's required to create a just society, and a just world.
Of special interest here is that Serve.gov is hosting the MLK Day Technology Challenge, aimed at connecting technologists -- "web professionals, developers, graphic designers and new media professionals" -- with schools and non-profits that could use their services. (Many of the projects they're pointing to last longer than just today.) There are, of course, countless other ways to serve today and every day of the year.