23rd Annual Detroit Martin Luther King Day
Rally & March
Followed by a Community Meal
St Matthew’s & St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church
8850 Woodward Ave, DetroitThe 23rd Annual Detroit MLK Day Rally and March will take place on Monday, January 19 at 12pm. The rally will take place at the historic St. Matthew’s and St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church located at 8850 Woodard, Detroit. JVP Detroit is proud to be a sponsor of this gathering.
The event will be streamed live. The link will be available on the MLK website, mlkdetroit.org by Sunday. The rally lineup will also be available on the website. This year’s program will feature speakers and cultural workers from the Detroit area to emphasize the decades-long struggle for civil rights, self-determination and social justice locally, nationally and internationally.
Guest Speakers and Cultural Workers (musicians, dancers, etc) Include:
Allen Dennard, Bill Meyer, Aurora Harris, Abayomi Azikiwe, Julia Wright (video message), Jesus Rodriguez Espinoza (video message from Caracas), Atty. Mark Fancher, Atty. Huwaida Arraf, New York Attorney General Leticia James (via video message), and others.The event is being held under the theme: “Six Decades of Mass Movements: The Struggle Continues.” Detroit has been at the center of the popular movements for labor, civil rights, political empowerment and self-determination extending back to the 19th century to the present.
Following the rally will be a short march through the local neighborhood. The temperature is expected to be between 10 and 20 degrees F, so if you plan on marching, please dress appropriately.
Following the march will be a community meal, spoken word and video messages from New York, Venezuela, and Europe.
Parking in the lot south of the church will be restricted to people with disabilities, others who are delivering the food and materials for the event. There is plenty of parking north of the church in the Considine Rec Center parking lot, across the street and on the side streets. Please refer to the map below.
If you would like to volunteer on the day of the event as an usher, parking lot attendant, food service worker, and for other tasks, please show up at 10am. We will also need help transitioning from the rally in the sanctuary to the community meal and program in the Fellowship hall next to the sanctuary.
ONLINE EVENT
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Update on Palestine with Mitchell PlitnickSign up to join this powerful update on Palestine from one of the foremost experts: https://tinyurl.com/JVPCO-Plitnick2026
Mitchell Plitnick, a political analyst and writer, is the president of ReThinking Foreign Policy. He is the author, with Marc Lamont Hill, of Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics, published in February 2021 by The New Press. Mitchell’s previous positions include vice president at the Foundation for Middle East Peace, Director of the US Office of B’Tselem: The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, and Co-Director of Jewish Voice for Peace.
His writing has appeared in Ha’aretz, the New Republic, Responsible Statecraft, Middle East Eye, The New Arab, Middle East Report, Mondoweiss, the San Francisco Chronicle, +972 Magazine, The Battleground, and other outlets. He has spoken all over the country on Middle East politics and has regularly offered commentary in a wide range of radio and television outlets including PBS NewsHour, Al Jazeera, the O’Reilly Factor, i24 (Israel), Pacifica Radio, CNBC Asia and others.
Mitchell will give us a brief update on the current situation in Gaza and the West Bank followed by a question-and-answer session.
We invite everyone who wants to support the national Jewish Voice for Peace and our JVP-Detroit chapter to join us. Become a member by visitingjvp.org/DetroitDonate.
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