Activists carrying on MLK’s legacy reflect on the coming years under Trump

“Trump and his allies, they will try to distract, divide and exhaust us at every turn,” Pressley said. “So when you feel weary, find strength in your neighbor.”

Boston, advocates say, is a fitting place to reckon with MLK’s legacy during a second Trump term, because it was here that the late activist put many of his values ​​into action. In 1965, he led a march of 20,000 people from Roxbury to Boston Common in the first civil rights march in the Northeast and denounced segregation in a speech to the state legislature.

Some advocates like Traci Griffith, racial justice program director for the ACLU of Massachusetts, find comfort in the fact that “we’ve been here before.” Griffith said Trump’s first term has given the ACLU of Massachusetts a road map of the “fundamental liberties and civil liberties” he promises to pursue.

For her organization, preparations look like pushing lawmakers to pass shield acts that could protect sensitive health information or making sure city leaders stick to their promises not to comply with immigration enforcement.

“This planning has been going on for months,” Griffith said. “We know the threats, we know the opportunities, and we’re fortified in a way that we weren’t the first time.”

Imari Paris Jeffries, executive director of Embrace Boston, the nonprofit behind the eponymous sculpture honoring King and his wife, Coretta Scott King, on the Common, said his organization had just launched around the time of Trump’s first inauguration.

Since then, among other activities, Embrace Boston has lobbied for justice-focused legislation in Massachusetts, hosted events centered on local culture and arts, and released a report last year to build a case for local reparations for black residents.

But under a new Trump administration, Paris Jeffries signaled that organizations like his will have to go back on the defensive. He pointed to proposed federal legislation passed by Parliament last fall that includes a provision allowing the Secretary of the Treasury to designate certain nonprofit organizations as “terrorist supporting organizations” and revoke their 501(c) status. Social justice advocates have said such consolidated power would allow the government to limit what activists and nonprofits can say or do.

Even if a nonprofit can successfully prove it’s not a “terrorist-supporting organization,” Paris Jeffries said, that could put a dent in available funding.

“To think that (the Trump administration) hasn’t even started yet, that’s significant,” he said.

Rahsaan D. Hall, executive director of the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts, a group that works to overcome racial and social barriers, said his organization has faced similar threats under previous administrations. The George W. Bush administration cut the Urban League’s federal resources two decades ago.

“As much as we want to demonize the Trump administration, other presidential administrations with conservative ideologies” have tried to undercut their mission, he said.

“We will double down on the three Ds of defending democracy, demanding diversity and defeating poverty,” Hall said. “It is the north star of the work we will continue to do.”

Friday’s speak-out on Boston Common marked one of many events over the long holiday weekend that leaned into King’s legacy as a way to help navigate the incoming administration. Boston University and the City of Boston collaborate on an annual event centered on “Whose Quest for Peace and Justice.” Embrace Boston is celebrating several changemakers at its annual Embrace Honors MLK event on Sunday evening. And the 55th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial breakfast, with renowned activist Angela Davis as keynote speaker, meets under the theme “Freedom is not free.”

“In times of heartache and challenge, the most important thing you need is community,” said Paris Jeffries. “To center joy, to center happiness.”

As Greater Boston residents use King’s example as a way forward, it’s important that they incorporate every part of the late leader’s ideologies, Hall said. King was not a “sanitized, colorblind” pacifist some purveyors of claims of reverse racism paint him as, and instead openly criticized white supremacy in the public and private sectors, he said.

“We need to honor him in his true context,” Hall said. “The relationships that he talked about still resonate today.”

It was a point Hall returned to at Friday’s event on the Common, which took place a few feet away from “The Embrace,” the memorial honoring King and Scott King, who met in Boston as students. Hall predicted that the nation is entering an era “of a reverse reality where Dr. King’s words and advocacy will be used” to support claims of reverse racism.

“His ‘I Have a Dream’ speech will continue to be chosen to justify the policies and behaviors that will destroy the very initiatives Dr. King’s words inspired,” he said.

Friday’s rally was organized by several advocacy groups, including the ACLU of Massachusetts, Embrace Boston, the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts and the NAACP Mystic Valley. Dozens of people took part in the demonstration, bundled up against the January cold. Some held signs. One read: “Practice Infinite Hope.” Another: “Strive for freedom.”

“We choose community over chaos,” said Griffith, the ACLU official. It was a rhetorical theme that recurred throughout the event.

Boston City Council President Ruthzee Louijeune said she wished “we continued on the linear journey toward justice, but sometimes we have to take a detour.”

“I think what we’re experiencing is a detour,” she said.

Louijeune said racism and xenophobia remain rife in the country, and said she felt “so discouraged, so broken,” in the wake of the presidential race.

“But then I remember that no one promised us an easy road,” she said. “No one ever told us that the work of justice would be easy.”

Paris Jeffries was among those who drew on King’s time in Boston, where he earned a Ph.D. at Boston University. He quoted King’s comments in the city 60 years ago: “It would be dishonest to say that Boston is Birmingham or that Massachusetts is Mississippi. But it would be irresponsible of me to deny the crippling poverty and injustice that exists in some parts of this community. The vision of the new Boston must extend into the heart of Roxbury.”

He continued: “Boston must be a testing ground for the ideals of liberty.”

This story was produced by Globe’s Money, power, inequality team covering the racial wealth gap in Greater Boston. You can sign up for the newsletter here.

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Tiana Woodard can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her @tianarochon. Danny McDonald can be contacted at [email protected]. Follow him @Danny__McDonald.