I attended the Martin Luther King Day 2014 at the Vanderbilt Langford Auditorium. The program was simply entitled “Do Justice.” An Evening With Danny Glover. After seeing him and taking his picture while at the Saturday 50th Anniversary March on Washington wearing the T-Shirt from the A. Philip Randolph Conference, I wanted a front row, center seat. The banner sign on the podium side of the stage stated this quote from Dr. King: “True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.”
Much of his “conversations” portrayed the wide reaching social justice and humanitarian activism to which he has given so much of his life. His personal expressions of the Justice theme in such a global context had me pinned to my seat. Rather than trust transmitting the things that I heard, I go forward with some things that I have read.
October 5, 2012 Danny Glover is executive producer, US release of “The House I Live In” a critique of our nation’s Prison Industrial Complex. It Chronicles extensive damage wrought upon families and communities by mass incarceration. “The idea that the war on drugs is really not a war on drugs, it’s a war on people.” His documentary won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival 2012.
December 13, 2012 The Correctional Association of New York announced the addition of Danny Glover to its Board of Directors. (Since 1844) an independent non-profit organization advocating for a more humane and effective criminal justice system and a more just and equitable society. Works to build the power of the communities most negatively affected by criminal justice policy. One of only two private organizations in the country with unrestricted access to prisons; with a legislative mandate to promote policies that transform.
May 30, 2013 Danny Glover joined a union protest in Johannesburg; South Africa’s Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union. Linking together for international support the Auto Workers Union protest in the Japanese owned and operated Nissan plant in Canton, Mississippi. Joined by Bob King, president of UAW by invitation of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa.
November 2013 Glover visited Ecuador in response to an invitation to show the world the scope of the environmental damage and the conditions that the affected villagers and farmers have endured for three decades as a result of Texaco (Chevron) Oil’s toxic waste exploitation and production. Ecuador’s Trial showed Chevron poured over 18 billion gallons of toxic wastewater into unlined pits, which contaminated the soil, the underground water, rivers and streams in the areas where it operated.
The MLKing Day Conversations with Danny Glover was ‘NO ACT’! His campaigns reflect an ultimate concern for the health and welfare of humankind. I heard his discussion on the staggering statistics of Blacks who live world wide under the poverty level, pointedly in South America. In relation, he clearly distinguished the US plight for ‘minimum wages’ as a struggle for ‘living wages’ as he talked about the theme ‘Economic (in)Justice’.
The banner sign opposite the podium on the stage stated this quote from Dr. King: “The time is always right to do what is right.”
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