MLK Meets Inauguration Day

By Roger Paradiso

On January 18, Chris “Oledude” Owens produced a show presented by The Peoples’ Voice Café at Judson Memorial Church. MLK Meets Inauguration Day took place two days after Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday and before the presidential inauguration. It would be an easy thing for me to say that the show was jumping and the artists were reaching into their souls to express their thoughts on King as well as where we are and where we are going. The presidential inauguration was not in the same class, to be kind, compared to the show at the Judson.

The performance reminded me of the type of shows we saw back while King was alive. The Judson Memorial Church has been sacred ground for performers since the 1960s. The simple set showcased the talent, live and in person, on a bare stage with minimal lighting.

Owens, dressed in black, opened by speaking of Dr. King and his national holiday on January 20. He also mentioned that on that same day a new president was being inaugurated. Owens said King was “an imperfect but wise young man who tried to empower alienated and oppressed communities… Had he not been shot to death…. Dr. King would have turned 96 years old and he might have continued to change the world. On January 20 we will watch the installation of America’s 47th president, a confirmed sex offender… a convicted felon…(who has) contempt for the rule of law…Tonight we ask “What would Dr. King say about where we are?”

Then, along with Shafiq Hicks, Owens sang his original The Choice. They delivered a powerful performance along with his community of musicians.

The Choice
“The choice. Our choice.
To Heaven or through Hell.
Open your heart.
Choose wisely and choose well.”

Among the many highlights of this evening was a letter to Dr. King by Elijah Dixon Owens. “How do we address violence? You wrote pacifism is a courageous confrontation of evil by the power of love.”

Another powerful moment was the Up To The Mountain performance by a great gospel and folk singer Dupree. This was a folk song inspired by Dr. King’s I’ve Been to the Mountaintop speech given the day before his assassination in Memphis.

Judy Gorman read a poem by Eduardo Hughes Galeano who was a Uruguayan journalist, writer and novelist considered, “a literary giant of the Latin American left.”

The Dignity of Desperate Hope
“May we continue to walk the paths of the wind, despite the falls and the betrayals and the defeats, because history continues, beyond us, and when she says goodbye, she is saying: see you later.

“May we be able to keep alive the certainty that it is to be compatriots and contemporaries of all who live animated by the will for justice and the will for beauty, be born where we are born and live where we live because the maps of the soul and time have no borders.”

Michael Hiller, founder and leader of the band “15th Street,” performed Safe at Home, an anti-gun anthem he wrote after he witnessed a news reporter and a camera man get shot while on live television. The audience sang along with the chorus.

The show closed with Owens and the rest of the company performing Pete Seeger’s classic We Shall Overcome.

The audience was singing as they left when a voice called out, “Can you please help fold the chairs?” Yes, this was true theater Off-Off Broadway. It was an amazing show.