By Ariana Mackey

The community of Somerville came together to honor the life and accomplishments of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Monday, Jan. 20, during an event titled, “The Dream: Equality for All.”

 – Photos by Claudia Ferro

The master of ceremonies for the event was Sonja Darai of the Office of Somerville Commissions. The 2014 Martin Luther King Jr. celebration began promptly at 11 a.m. with Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone giving a warm welcome to the residents sitting before him in the East Somerville Community School auditorium. He spoke about the past years the town has celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. and some history behind the day.

Succeeding the mayor’s welcome, the El Sistema Somerville Youth Orchestra, directed by Silas DeOliveira, performed a piece specifically for the MLK event.

Also as part of the event, the Somerville public schools selected several youths who wrote essays about King and what equality truly means to them. The first four chosen to speak about their essays were Patrick Raftery, Tenzin Kunkhyen, Remy Minkoff and Owen Carr. The various essays described how equality by their own standards, as well as King’s, included promoting friendship and judging people based on their character as opposed to their race.

The Somerville High School Dance Club then performed to the music of A Change is Gonna Come by Same Cooke and I Have a Dream by Common. The performers danced around the stage in a performance choreographed by Kevin Dua and Carlos Contreras just for the event.

The featured speaker was Dr. Adenrele Awotona, the director of the Center for Rebuilding Sustainable Communities after Disasters at UMass Boston. Awotona spoke about the center and how it embodies King’s spirit by promoting justice and equality. The center participates in conferences with multiple countries, such as Japan, Iraq, Haiti, China, and Indonesia with a focus on children, the elderly and the disabled and how to aid them after disasters and in the community.

Awotona also spoke about a specific conference in Iraq concerning women and how they are viewed, especially with the conflict currently taking place in the country. He discussed how the center tries to rid the country of inequalities and injustices by helping the poor and those affected by disasters so that all people can be viewed as equal, an ideal of King’s.

The last three youth essayists, Kiely Johnson, Tommy Barton and Isabel Ramalho Silva, came onto the stage after Awotona’s address to explain their essays and why everyone should be equal. They explained how King was correct in saying that everyone must meet hate with love and that his speeches have changed the minds of millions of people, making the world a better place to live. They encouraged the crowd to look amongst themselves and know that the diversity they saw would not be possible without King’s ideals and that the world would be completely different without his accomplishments.

The Somerville Interfaith Pickup Choir performed next with three songs under the direction of Marcus Mack: We Shall Overcome, Lift Every Voice and Sing, as well as We Shall not be Moved. The choir consists of vocalists from different religious organizations that all came together to show that equality must be celebrated and encouraged.

Also an annual tradition, the community of Somerville was to publically select an individual, as well as an organization, to win the 2014 Martin Luther King Jr. Award. The winners of the awards must succeed in promoting human and civil rights, respect, nonviolence and economic justice. A public survey is released, and members of the community must nominate who they believe should receive each award.

The winner of the individual award was Valquiria Gouvea, a seventh- and eighth-grade social studies teacher in the Somerville public school system. Gouvea was selected due to her skills of promoting education, as well as her support and empowerment of teachers and students alike. The community agreed she is thoughtful and relevant with her contributions and consistently respects and is compassionate towards her students, making her the clear recipient of this year’s award.

The winner of the organization award was SCALE, the Somerville Center for Adult Learning Experiences. SCALE offers GED programs for adults in the Somerville community and ESL (English as a second language) programs to aid low-income residents, however they may need, to reach their educational goals. There to receive the award on SCALE’s behalf was Melissa Viscovich, the program administrator. She agreed that SCALE was a worthy recipient of the award due to the fact that they are all working towards King’s vision: They believe that education is key to equality, which is what they work towards for people of all ages.

Returning to the stage was the Somerville Interfaith Pickup Choir to sing We Shall Overcome with the help of the audience to join in the end the celebration, along with words of thanks from Darai.