Fort Collins day of service honors Martin Luther King Jr. despite march's cancellation

The spirit of Martin Luther King Jr. was alive and well Monday in Fort Collins, even without the annual march commemorating the life of the late civil rights leader on the national holiday in his honor.

About 175 volunteers braved below-zero temperatures and snow-covered roads to participate in a “Day of Service” event Monday morning at the Lincoln Center, and hundreds more were on hand a few hours later for a formal program to honor King’s legacy.

Several local dignataries, including Fort Collins Mayor Jeni Arndt, Front Range Community College President Colleen Simpson, Poudre School District Superintendent Brian Kingsley and Bridgette Johnson, Colorado State University's assistant vice president of the office of inclusive excellence, spoke at the start of the formal program. CSU student Kylynn White read a short story she had written, E.M.E. performed a song, and playwright, author and producer Ira Knight gave the keynote speech with a dramatic one-man performance designed to help a modern audience relate to King and his work.

Following his performance of "From Myth to Man: Martin Luther King, An Interpretation by Ira Knight," the speaker explained his motivation with a reference to the theme of the Fort Collins event.

"It starts with us, and let me move beyond me to do the best I can," Knight said during a question-and-answer session.

Earlier, volunteers sorted dozens of bags of donated clothing on two long tables in a conference room, folded and re-bagged them by clothing type and size and stuffed them into a van for Homeward Alliance, a local nonprofit organization with a variety of programs to assist the homeless. A third table contained feminine hygiene products that were sorted, packaged and boxed for distribution by the organization.

Rahshida Perez, executive director of The BIPOC Alliance, said the MLK Day of Service event last year at Colorado State University’s Lory Student Center, held before the annual march from Old Town to CSU, was the largest single donation to Homeward Alliance in five years.

Homeward Alliance worked with more than 65 different providers to serve more than 740 families at its annual resource fair last year, said Tara Hunter, the organization’s grants coordinator who gave a brief presentation as the volunteers wrapped up their work in the Canyon West Ballroom.

“It’s nice to have it here at the Lincoln Center; it’s a much bigger space,” volunteer Sarah Lawrence said. “Usually, we’ve just done the toiletry kits, and this year we’ve got all the clothing.”

Lawrence and her husband, Dave, said they’ve volunteered at the Day of Service before participating in the annual march with their two daughters — Mayla, 11, and Nora, 8 — for the past five years.

“For me, it’s especially important to teach our kids about giving back to the community, and this is a really good way to do it; to be in community with other folks,” she said. “It’s just part of setting up our family traditions around community building, so this is one of our contributions — one of the things we do every year.”

Added Mayla: “It’s just nice to help people.”

The theme of this year’s MLK Day events in Fort Collins was “It All Starts With Us,” Perez told the volunteers, “and it all starts with us, waking up each morning; how can we serve each day? How do we serve one another. How do we make someone else’s life better.

“You’re doing that today.”

Aliyl McKinzie was a first-time volunteer, sorting clothing with fellow CSU students Betty Abate and Gabby Rhodes. McKinzie has only been in Fort Collins for a week, she said, after relocating from the St. Louis area.

They would have participated in the march, too, had it been held, Abate said.

But the service event was important, as well.

“It’s definitely hard to wake up in the morning and get here, especially during this weather,” she said. “But it’s always good to come together as a community to do this. Serving others like this makes you want to do it more often — volunteering, helping, carrying on the legacy.”

Johnathan Itzep-Velasquez was really hoping to join the march again this year, as he had done a year ago. Instead, he and three other members of the CSU chapter of the historically Latino-based Sigma Lambda Beta fraternity were sorting clothes and helping haul the filled bags into the van.

“We’re just here trying to help our African American community spread cultural awareness for our own community and other underrepresented communities here in Fort Collins,” Itzep-Velasquez said. “That’s one of our goals as a fraternity is to spread cultural awareness.

“It’s cool to see that everyone came out in the snow and all that. It was tough getting here.”

Reporter Kelly Lyell covers education, breaking news, some sports and other topics of interest for the Coloradoan. Contact him at kellylyell@coloradoan.com, twitter.com/KellyLyell or facebook.com/KellyLyell.news. 

This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Fort Collins day of service honors Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy