Following up on the dream
BOISE – The best way for Idahoans to celebrate the life of Martin Luther King Jr. is to continue his legacy of public service, Gov. Dirk Kempthorne said Monday in his Martin Luther King Jr./Idaho Human Rights Day address.
“If you’re looking for a cure to the ills of society, service is the prescription,” Kempthorne told more than 200 people who filled the Statehouse rotunda. “It’s a remedy to hate and intolerance, and it is the cure for the cancer of bigotry.”
In discussing the great things that can be accomplished through service, Kempthorne cited a pair of boxing gloves signed by Muhammad Ali that hang in his office. Ali wrote on the gloves, “Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on Earth,” Kempthorne said.
“While his handwritten message didn’t give the secret to success in the boxing ring, I think it gives the secret to success in life,” Kempthorne said. “Serving one another – serving our communities – that’s the key to greatness, and that’s the theme of this Martin Luther King Jr./Idaho Human Rights Day.”
The annual celebration began with the reading of King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech by 11-year-old Joe McNeal V, grandson of Joe McNeal III, the mayor of Mountain Home, Idaho.
Will Rainford, an assistant professor at Boise State University and a legislative liaison with Catholic Charities of Idaho, delivered the keynote address, discussing the economic inequalities plaguing the country and the rights of farmworkers.
“What does it say about us when we brand hardworking, God-loving, family-focused farm laborers as a threat to civil order before disease-ridden, welfare-seeking violent criminals?” Rainford said. “Are we not all oppressors when we support a system that excludes others from economic opportunities?”
The speeches followed a rally by the Idaho Community Action Network in which farmworkers and supporters called for changes in pesticide laws to make them simpler to understand and easier to enforce. Farmworker advocacy groups in Idaho have traditionally recognized Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a federal holiday, by advocating at the Legislature for improved worker rights and protections.
The 29 Canyon County farmworkers who were hospitalized in July after being exposed to hazardous chemicals are proof that Idaho laws need to change to ensure everyone is protected, speakers told a crowd of about 80 gathered on the west steps of the Statehouse.
“Family values in Idaho mean that you don’t treat your workers like that,” said the Rev. Betty Beck of the First Presbyterian Church in Emmett. “Pesticide poisoning is not a moral behavior.”
State Department of Agriculture spokesman Wayne Hoffman said that current laws already protect workers from pesticide exposure and that the incident in Canyon County would not have occurred had they been properly enforced.
The state supports enforcing existing laws, not changing them, Hoffman said.