The statue of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at his memorial site on the edge of the Tidal Basin, which was dedicated in 2011 in Washington, D.C. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images).
Today is a day of reckoning. Today, resurgent white supremacy takes the oath of office on a day meant to commemorate a Black man who, 61 years before, stood at the other end of the National Mall and dreamt of Black liberation.
The stark contrast of today forcefully reminds us that Martin Luther King Jr. Day should not be a celebration of an idealized dream. Instead, it should be reckoning with the truth of the cold reality of the world. It is a call to confront the past with unflinching honesty, grapple with its wounds, and demand a radically different future.
In the less publicized first half of his “I Have a Dream” speech, Dr. King outlined the unrelenting urgency of his appeal: “The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.”
King’s dream was not an empty promise or shallow vision of racial reconciliation. His dream was a demand—for justice and the dismantling of systems built on violence and exploitation.
King’s rhetoric was not that of a meek man, trying to please the oppressor, but the language of a prophet who knew that love, in its truest sense, is not soft. It burns. It demands nothing less than the complete and utter reorganization of society.
King’s legacy is not a relic to be confined in monuments or sanitized for comfort. It is a challenge — a fierce, unrelenting call to action for all of us who share King’s righteous rage and who continue to experience oppression under the systems he fought to dismantle.
One of the greatest displays of a system of racial injustice is the criminal legal system which cages nearly two million people in prisons across this country. Black people make up 13% of the population, but we account for over 40% of those incarcerated.
This is a national disgrace by design.
Policing, incarceration and the judicial system — they do not protect. They destroy. They tear through families and communities like storms that refuse to end. When we speak of “reform,” we are merely bandaging a wound that demands surgery. The system does not heal—it dismembers. It rots the very core of what it means to be human.
Dr. King’s dream was a guide to continue dismantling the criminal legal system by centering shalom, forgiveness and transformative justice in the struggle for Black liberation.
Shalom — the peace we so urgently need — is not merely the absence of conflict, but the presence of justice, wholeness and healing. Shalom cannot coexist with violence masquerading as law, where people are crushed under the weight of injustice.
To imagine shalom is to dare to believe in a world built on justice and restoration.
We are often told forgiveness alone is the answer. That somehow, forgiveness will fix what is broken. We are told to forgive the centuries of violence, endless humiliation and repeated betrayals without acknowledgment or courage for confrontation.
Forgiveness is presented as a convenient lie — a tool of the oppressor. At its most dangerous, forgiveness demands the forgetfulness of the oppressed. Forgiveness tells us we must let the systems of oppression go on as they always have, unchallenged and unexamined. This is not forgiveness—it is submission.
Real forgiveness is never passive. It is a radical act of truth-telling, confrontation, naming what has been done to us and our ancestors, and demanding repair. True forgiveness cannot exist without justice.
This is where transformative justice enters the picture. Transformative justice is neither a cure-all nor an easy path. It is rooted in the belief that people are capable of change. It is a vision that holds everyone accountable to one another. Transformative justice understands harm must be reckoned with and healing must be collective.
Imagine a world where justice moves as water does, flowing toward the most broken, washing them clean. Imagine a world where harm is brought into the open, where those who cause harm are given the opportunity for accountability, and where reparations are a necessity.
Transformative justice and Black liberation are not abstract ideals. Every day, people practice building a world where shalom — justice, peace and healing — can thrive in community.
When I think of Black liberation, I think of Keisha, a Black woman walking her own neighborhood in Carondelet until a bullet shattered her peace.
Random, they called it. As though randomness could dull the pain or lessen the scar. Doctors, cold and distant, told her they “are not in the business of removing bullets.” The police left her with no answers, no justice, no support.
“Why did this happen?” Keisha asked herself the next day, walking and weeping, searching for meaning in the violence.
The answers weren’t waiting in an institution, a report, or a sterile room. The answers came from her people.
Her community — Freedom Community Center, The Bullet Related Injury Clinic and neighbors who saw her humanity — gathered around her. They treated her wounds, secured her safety and gave her a sense of belonging.
At Freedom Community Center, we refuse to let harm define us. We work for something deeper than justice by the state’s measure. We build safety, belonging, and accountability outside the walls of a system that ignores us. We center survivors like Keisha, whose courage reminds us of what is possible when we care for one another.
“I just hope to be part of the community,” Keisha said, “to love on some people that probably look like this person—so it won’t happen again.”
The truth this world doesn’t want to face: the only way forward is together. Community is not just where we heal; it’s how we transform. Keisha’s survival is not the end of the story. It’s the beginning of something extraordinary.
Through this work, we are building a movement. We are breaking the state’s chokehold on our lives and building systems of community safety.
Dr. King’s work is not done.
It was a blueprint.
A battle cry.
We are the ones who must take up his work now. We are the ones who must fight for shalom.