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SGI News: Global activities for peace, education and culture

Martin Luther King Jr. Celebrated

Dr. King's life and accomplishments celebrated at the SGI center in Santa Monica, California   [Photo by Margaret Molloy]

In January, members of SGI-USA participated in a host of events across the country honoring the life of Martin Luther King, Jr.

On January 12, SGI-USA members in Ann Arbor, Michigan, hosted the opening of the "Gandhi, King, Ikeda: A Legacy of Building Peace" exhibition at the University of Michigan. The man who conceived the exhibition, Dr. Lawrence E. Carter, Sr., dean of the Martin Luther King Jr. Chapel of Morehouse College, was a special guest along with Ann Arbor mayor John Hieftje.

In Fresno, California, SGI members joined an interfaith music service at the fellowship Missionary Baptist Church on January 15. The Central Valley Fresno SGI-USA chorus sang "I Have a Dream," and an SGI member read Dr. King's famous speech of that title.

On the same day SGI-USA hosted and cosponsored the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration at the SGI-USA World Culture Center. The event received the largest turnout in its 22-year history. Keynote speaker Dr. Lawrence Carter spoke about the need for a "revolution of values--from a 'thing-oriented' society to a 'person-oriented' society."

At the SGI-USA New York Culture Center that same day, the fourth Annual Youth Nonviolence conference got under way with the theme "Youth Empowerment: Embracing Our Potential for a Culture of Peace." The event was cosponsored by the Temple of Understanding and attracted 160 young people from different faiths and cultures. The keynote speaker was William Gyude Moore, 25, from Liberia, West Africa, who is a WFUNA Global Civil Society Champion.

Adeeb Yousif from Darfur, guest of the International Center for Tolerance Education, conducted a workshop called "Personal Account from Darfur." During the event there were also workshops on such topics as "Seeds of Change: Ending Poverty, Helping Farmers" and "Victory Over Violence."

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