Reflections on the Dream Reborn

This year, I was proud to help launch a new, national organization, Green For All. Our advocacy organization is committed to building an inclusive, green economy, strong enough to lift millions of people out of poverty.

Green For All wanted to do something special on April 4, 2008 - to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

So we did something unusual. We brought more than 1,000 people to Memphis, the Southern city where he was assassinated.

And then and there: we declared the Dream ... REBORN.

Furthermore: we vowed that - this time - the Dream will uplift both the people AND the planet.

It was beautiful. The "Dream Reborn" conference was the first "green" summit to honor MLK and explicitly link his vision of justice to the emerging green economy. For everyone who attended, it seemed to be a transformative, life-changing experience.

For years and years, conventional wisdom has held that no "green conference" could attract people of color or low-income people. It was always assumed that attendance at such summits would always be 90 percent white and overwhelmingly affluent.

Not this time. More than 70 percent of the 1,200 attendees were people of color. And more than half of all attendees were of modest means; as a result, they qualified for some level of "scholarship" support to attend the three-day event. (Thanks to the generosity of Green For All's supporters, we were able to raise enough money to financially support hundreds of people who would been unable to come otherwise.)

As a result, the conference didn't just LOOK totally different. It FELT totally different. From the main stage, we heard drums, prayers, choirs, poetry, and speeches that sounded more like passionate "civil rights" sermons. From the audience, we heard cheers, chants, shouts and - sometimes - sobs.

And during workshop times, the conference center looked like a ghost town. That is because few attendees lingered in the hallways, chatting and socializing and trading business cards. Instead, they crammed themselves into every chair, covered every bit of floor space, stood along the walls - hungry to learn how they could make their own neighborhoods and cities bloom as green oases of prosperity.

During the day, the plenaries, panels, workshops and sessions were packed and over-flowing with people of color, labor leaders and white people from struggling communities. And at night, slam poets grabbed the microphones, dance music took over the sound system and laughter filled the sidewalks and streets around the conference center. Outside of a church revival, I have never seen so many people of color laughing, crying and hugging.

In fact, I have never experienced the kind of energy I felt throughout the convening. Good reason, apparently. Civil right veterans in attendance were openly weeping; they said they had experienced nothing like it since the 1960s.

Something powerful shifted on April Fourth.

Dr. King was only 39 when an assassin gunned him down. He has been gone for 40 years now, longer than he was ever here. Since his murder, two generations of adults, plus a rising batch of teen-agers, have been born. And we each have a duty to re-imagine the Dream for a new century - and to make it into a reality. On April Fourth, a critical mass of us decided to do just that.

Below, I offer the reflections of some of the bloggers and reporters who attended.

And for photos and videos, I invite you to check out: DreamReborn.org  and GreenForAll.org. And special thanks to the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, which co-sponsored the event with us.

I do hope that some of the joy generated at the conference spills over into your day.

Green for all,
van