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This Monday may be a bonus day for the weekend — a day to sleep in and skip out on class — but the true meaning of the day will not be lost for the University of Maine community.
For the 14th year running, UMaine will host the Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast Celebration. In collaboration with the Greater Bangor National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the annual breakfast will be held in Wells Conference Center and will boast a variety of guests.
Although the breakfast has been held for over a decade, this is the third year UMaine has coordinated the event with the NAACP.
“It’s a better mix. It’s really enhanced the program,” said Diane Kiehl, a member of the Greater Bangor NAACP. “Making it better is always the goal.”
The program will begin at 8 a.m. with gospel music from the Destiny Worship Praise Team, from a new nondenominational church in Brewer. Speakers including UMaine President Robert Kennedy and Gov. John Baldacci will make brief statements, followed by breakfast and the keynote address.
The Rev. Phil Ertha from York, Ala., will address the breakfast audience. Ertha has family ties to UMaine and has worked all around the country as a preacher, soloist and writer.
“His objective is to examine Dr. King’s dream in 2010,” Kiehl said. “Are we paying attention to it? Are we still striving for it?”
“It is important to stay on the message … it is about Dr. King,” Kiehl added.
Kiehl also promised a surprise announcement from the university at the end of the breakfast and a performance from Renaissance, UMaine’s all-women a capella group.
Tickets are required for the event and cost $20 for adults, $15 for seniors and $10 for students and children under 12.
Although the breakfast celebration has been a long-standing tradition at the university, the UMaine community is celebrating Dr. King’s legacy throughout the area.
A variety of student organizations will host the first annual MLK Jr. Day of Service at the Bangor Mall. The event will be sponsored by the Bodwell Center for Service and Volunteerism, Office of Multicultural Programs, UMaine Athletics and UMaine Change Agents.
The event, sponsored by a grant, is geared toward children grades three to five in the greater Bangor area.
“It’s a large community event we’ve never done before,” said Heather Kitchen, graduate assistant for the Office of Multicultural Programs. “It’s geared toward children, since they’re the heart of the community.”
The day of service at the mall will run from 1 to 5 p.m. and will host a variety of workshops. Students will move through stations, assisted by UMaine athletes. The stations include a puppet show about King’s “I have a dream” speech, a chance to make clay sculptures about student’s individual dreams, team-building games, circle chats and Native American storytelling by John Bear Mitchell from the Wabanaki Center.
“It really allows people to hear other people’s experiences,” Kitchen said.
Students will wrap up the experience by creating a collaborative mural that will travel around district schools.
“It will be the student response from the day and what they learned from it,” Kitchen said. “It’s neat to have these dialogues together.”
Kitchen said the focus of the day will revolve around diversity, community building, respect, civility and differences and similarities. She noted that people assume the diversity means racial, but the message reaches much deeper than that.
“On one level, Maine isn’t diverse, but you have to look at it differently,” Kitchen said. “There’s more than just a surface level of [diversity].”
“Being in the state of Maine … we don’t understand what diversity really is,” said Kristen Sutherland, graduate assistant for the Bodwell Center. “[The event] is about spreading the word and making people more comfortable.”
Sutherland noted that Martin Luther King Jr. Day is a good jump-off point to spread the word of diversity.
“There are still people out there making negative comments,” Sutherland said.
Kitchen and the Office of Multicultural programs will assist in the breakfast celebration and a community potluck Jan. 17. The potluck will be held at the Keith Anderson Community Center in Orono. The MLK Jr. Birthday Commemoration event will promote a community conversation and an open mic style café. Area organizations including the Peace and Justice Center of Eastern Maine, local high school students and UMaine students will host the dinner.
Bangor Daily News