A call to action

Fight injustice, help Haiti, hundreds at MLK event urged

By DON SHILLING

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER

YOUNGSTOWN — It’s time to stand up and act, just as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. did, a speaker said.

“Who’s got next?” the Rev. Amariah McIntosh said to hundreds of people who packed Elizabeth Missionary Baptist Church on Himrod Avenue Sunday for a service to honor King.

The line came from television commercials before the 1992 Olympics. The ads showed members of the U.S. women’s basketball team finding men playing basketball at various locations and surprising them by saying, “We got next.”

The men laughed until the women took the court against them.

Rev. McIntosh, the keynote speaker at a community worship service to honor King, asked the audience to be as bold as the women in those commercials.

Society needs people who will stand up against racism and poverty, said the pastor of Phillips Chapel CME in Youngstown. Society needs people who will stand up for those suffering with AIDS and other diseases and those suffering from child abuse and elder abuse, she said.

“We need folk who will fight for justice. Who’s got next?”

By the time Rev. McIntosh was done with her challenge, many in the audience were standing, clapping and shouting their affirmation.

There was one other group that Rev. McIntosh said needed assistance — the people of Haiti who are suffering from last week’s earthquake.

Helping these victims was a focus of the service, which is organized annually by the Martin Luther King Planning Committee of Mahoning County.

Donations were accepted at the end of the service.

To demonstrate how poor Haiti is, one of the speakers, the Rev. Terry Hazel of St. Michael Catholic Church in Canfield, showed off a round item that he brought back from Haiti two months ago.

The item, which was slightly larger than a hockey puck, is called a Haitian cookie. It is made of mud, water and a little bit of oil.

People in Haiti pay the equivalent of a nickel for the item because it tricks the stomach into not being hungry, he said.

“Conditions were deplorable before the earthquake. I can’t imagine what it’s like now,” he said.

Father Hazel has been in contact by e-mail with a priest in Haiti who said hundreds of refugees are showing up in his part of the country, which was away from the center of the earthquake. Many of them had carried bodies of relatives 100 miles so they could receive a decent burial.

It was against this backdrop that Rev. McIntosh encouraged the audience to be involved in helping others, as King was.

She started her message by singing a song with these lyrics, “If I can help somebody as I travel along, then my living shall not be in vain.”

shilling@vindy.com

Events scheduled to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.:

Today: MLK Community Workshop, 9:30 a.m. to noon, First Presbyterian Church, 201 Wick Ave., Youngstown.

Today: King Day town-hall discussion, 11 a.m., Our Lady of Hungary Church Hall, 545 N. Belle Vista Ave., Youngstown. Topic: “Academic Emergency: The State of Our City Schools.” Doors open at 10:30 a.m. Host is Pastor Cecil Monroe.

Today: Annual King Day Luncheon, 1 p.m., Donald Lockett VFW Post 6488, 2065 Coitsville-Hubbard Road (state Route 616), Youngstown. The post will present its annual Trailblazer Award to Dr. Wendy Webb, superintendent of Youngstown city schools.

Thursday: King Day Diversity Breakfast at Youngstown State University, 8:30 to 10 a.m., Chestnut Room, Kilcawley Center. Speaker: the Rev. Dr. Otis Moss, pastor emeritus, Olivet Institutional Baptist Church, Cleveland.

Source: YSU, VFW Post 6488, Pastor Cecil Monroe, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Planning Committee