More than 200 people gathered today in the New Mexico State Capitol Rotunda for Santa Fe NAACP's Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration. Gene Grant, the executive director of the New Mexico Office of African American Affairs, gave the keynote speech.
Grant, an African-American Santa Fean focused his speech on a question he said he is often asked around Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
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And that question is—what can I as a non African American person, do from Santa Fe to help in this fight? What can I do from a city that is thoughtful, civic minded and engaged, but where the African American population is small. So racism can feel abstract, and justice often appears to be belonging somewhere else other than Santa Fe.
Dr Martin Luther King did not measure moral obligation by proximity or by percentage. He measured it by leverage. Dr King understood that justice is shaped most decisively, not where harm is most visible, like you might think, but where decisions are made. That's where we need to lean into. That is why this place matters. That's why this building matters, not as a symbol of the Roundhouse, but like all state houses, as a site of consequence.
Today is not only about remembering Dr King as a figure of the past, it's about asking what his work demands of us here and now in this building, particularly here in Santa Fe.
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The celebration comes just two months after the Trump administration removed Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth from the list of days that National Parks charge no entrance fees. Although Martin Luther King Jr. Day has been federally recognized since 1983, city, county and state proclamations proclaimed January 19 as Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Mayor Michael Garcia told KSFR it is important for Santa Fe to hold onto its values in the face of such changes.
"We are taking action at the grassroots level to push pressure up to the federal level," Garcia said. "We can't forget where we come from."
