Tenth Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Community Parade
Monday, January 19, 2025, 10:30 AM
Randolph Street United Methodist Church (118 South Randolph Street Lexington, VA 24450)
Coverage from the Lexington News Gazette:
Coverage from WNRN Radio:
Coverage from the Ring-tum Phi:
(A public health-conscious alternative to the MLK Parade of previous years)
Stand Up T-Shirts Available Now! Order Early! Makes a great holiday gift. We also have a selection of CARE themed Winter Hats!
Go to CARE Store.
Due to pandemic health concerns, this year’s celebration is designed toallow community members to find and maintain a distanced space to demonstrate public commitment to an equal and inclusive community. For the health and safety of yourself and others please wear face coverings. We will Stand Up for Justice, Love, and Equality in the streets of our Community!
We will simultaneously use a rectangle of streets at the heart of our parade route. The Stand Up will begin at 10:30 and finish at 10:45. Participants should begin taking spaces in the street at 10:15 a.m. and no earlier than 10 a.m. We will finish before 11:00 a.m.
Participants will be directed to open spaces with assistance of our Marshals. For the health and safety of yourself and others please wear face coverings. All participants not dependent on the physical assistance of others will stand as single individuals. We will direct participants to find spots that are isolated by a minimum of 6 feet on all sides.
Distancing is not only for safety. It is also our attempt to symbolically occupy community space and hold up all the lives, especially black and brown, lost to Covid and to racist violence this year. So we are creating empty spaces amongst us as an important part of the event.
We will use photography, professional drone imagery, and individual selfies (bring your phones!) to capture a images of a community that is claiming its streets for nonviolence.
For further details, please read our participation and safety guidelines here.
For updates, visit our facebook page.
As preparations for Monday’s third annual CARE Rockbridge Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Parade down Lexington’s Main Street ramp up, organizers representing diverse area communities are pointing to the importance of recommitting ourselves to King’s dream today. This year’s theme, “We March for Justice,” visible around town in original artwork for parade t-shirts and posters, was selected to drive home the significance of continuing to work for a truly equal society, said Robin LeBlanc, CARE vice president.
“When we think of how in today’s society a young African-American man who is a registered guest in a hotel can be told to leave and threatened with criminal charges while talking to his mother in the lobby, then we are compelled to march for justice because justice has yet to be fully realized for all in our country,” explained Rev. Reginald A. Early, pastor of Randolph Street United Methodist Church and CARE Rockbridge President, referring to a recent incident in Portland, Oregon.
Parade organizers emphasized that they are working in tense times to deliver messages of welcome and inclusion to many different communities in contemporary Rockbridge County. Fio Lewis, a local resident of Peruvian descent, a CARE board member, and the organizer of the Lexington’s first Latino Heritage Festival at Hopkins Green last fall, describes the area’s Latino residents as “feeling under pressure” and in need of positive voices from the larger community
“People in the Latino community feel scared and worry that people are angry with us given all the negative rhetoric about immigration,” Lewis said. “We feel a little bit like we can’t even speak publicly about immigration until the political conflicts are resolved.” Lewis added that she knows a number of students at local community colleges and universities have “DACA” (deferred action for childhood arrivals) status, and they live in constant uncertainty about whether they will have the right to work when they finish their studies.
“We need this parade. We need something to help us feel safe and open and free,” Lewis added.
Project Connection, a teen-led, non-profit organization that connects local high school students with children with disabilities for monthly events that employ movement, art, and teamwork, has also chosen to participate in next week’s parade as a means of furthering equality and inclusion for members of society who are often marginalized. “CARE’s central message of love and unity coincides so well with PC’s tenets of community, outreach, and educating others,” said Project Connection President Abby Hamilton, a Rockbridge County High School senior. The non-partisan CARE MLK Parade will step off from in front of Lexington’s Randolph Street United Methodist Church at 10 a.m., Monday, Jan. 21. CARE stands for “Community Anti-Racism Effort.” CARE Rockbridge was founded in the Spring of 2016 to speak out about racism in all its forms, especially those that impact members of the Lexington and Rockbridge community.
For more information about the parade, please visit our parade page.
