Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s daughter, Dr. Bernice King, hosts event ‘to make love our norm’

July 15, 2021

In an effort to interrupt the rampant hate in our society, Dr. Bernice King, the daughter of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is hosting a virtual event that encourages love to become the new norm.

The event: “Be Love Day“ will be streamed on The King Center website from 10 a.m.-6 p.m. EST on July 16 and will include a variety of hosts and influencers throughout the day.

Participants can also tune in on YouTube and Facebook Live. Actor Daniel Dae Kim, journalist Jose Antonio Vargas and TV host Jeannie Mai will be attending the event.
The event will include musical performances, and organization representatives will be highlighting the work they do on behalf of justice.
Viewers will be encouraged to take the pledge and sign up for Be Love training (July 19-22).
“As we consider the hate and inhumanity in our World House, we must, with the fierce urgency of now, embrace love as our only recourse and as our fuel for immediate personal, cultural, and societal action. On Be Love Day, we are galvanizing people to interrupt the norm, to make love our norm and to join in a love revolution! Love is not passive. It is an active purveyor of true peace, which, as my father, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., taught us, includes justice. And love is the foundation of nonviolence, our pathway to the Beloved Community. Be a part of Be Love Day. Be a part of transforming people and systems with the power of love. Let’s Be Love on Be Love Day and beyond,” King told NextShark.

Additional details: Participants were given three challenge themes to focus on for each week from July 5-16, including “interrupting unjust laws and policies,” “interrupting economic inequities” and “interrupting biases and stereotypes.”

The challenges called for them to conduct more research on the injustices, research and consider investing money into minority banking institutions and share the institutions with friends on social media.
The last challenge was to make a note of personal biases or stereotypes and find one solution that would help to eliminate them.
Actress Ashley Bell joined King on Instagram Live to discuss how to interrupt economic inequity with a focus on banking practices on July 9.

King on #StopAsianHate: King has previously spoken out about the rising violence on Asian Americans referring to the attacks as “heartbreaking” and “inexcusable.”

She has tweeted about standing with the Asian American community on multiple occasions and criticized the use of the terms “kung-flu” and “China virus” saying, “This rhetoric isn’t harmless, especially with hate crimes against our Asian global family members already on the rise.”
A day after the Atlanta spa shootings, King weighed in on the topic of determining whether incidents were racially motivated — a point that the shooter denied.
“Just because someone says their acts of violence weren’t ‘racially motivated’ doesn’t mean they weren’t. Racism is viciously nuanced, with historical context, economic considerations and warped ideology,” wrote King.
On Be Love Day, King hopes to stop the hate with discussions on how to help people unlearn hate in education, on social media, in media and with legislation.

Featured Image via Bernice King (left), The King Center (right)

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