CLOSINGS:
Frederick, Warren, Clarke and Shenandoah county offices are closed. There is no trash or recycling pick-up.
The City of Winchester's offices are open today. All services, including refuse and recycling collection, are on schedule.
In addition, post offices, banks, public schools and all federal offices will be closed.
CELEBRATIONS:
Lord Fairfax Community College invites you to a day-long workshop, "Creating the Beloved Community," to be led by Betty Kilby Baldwin and Phoebe Kilby. The goal of the workshop is to explore a path to creating "the beloved community" envisioned by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This path involves:
- Uncovering history: researching, acknowledging, and sharing personal, family and community histories of race with openness and honesty.
- Making connections: connecting to others within and across racial lines in order to develop and deepen relationships.
- Working toward healing: exploring how we can heal together through dialogue, reunion, ritual, ceremony, the arts, apology, and other methods.
- Taking action: actively seeking to heal the wounds of racial inequality and injustice and to support racial reconciliation between individuals, within families, and in communities.
The workshop is offered in the three parts, and participants may choose to attend one, two, or all three sessions.
Morning Session (9:30 am to noon): An introduction to concepts of historical trauma and why traumatic events of the past influence racial relationships today, preventing the creation of the beloved community.
Midday Session (noon to 1:00 pm): Betty Kilby Baldwin and Phoebe Kilby present how they as the great great granddaughter of slaves and the great great granddaughter of enslavers met and embarked on a path of racial healing, reconciliation and restorative justice.
Afternoon Session (1:10 to 3:45 pm): An exploration of the Coming to the Table approach to creating the beloved community by uncovering history, making connections, working toward healing and taking action.
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Shenandoah University's AmeriCorps VISTA representatives, in collaboration with the Center for Public Service & Scholarship, Our Health and the Office of Spiritual Life, will sponsor Remember. Unite. Serve., from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., in the Brandt Student Center. Individuals can volunteer to help Winchester non-profit agencies by stuffing envelopes or assembling packages. Our Health organizations will set up stations throughout the main hallway. Participants can also sign up with Volunteer Hub, an online volunteer registration program that connects people to community agencies with specific needs.
Martin Luther King Jr. Service of Remembrance begins at 3 p.m. in Goodson Chapel/Recital Hall and features guest speaker Marcus Briggs-Cloud of the Maskoke Creek Nation, and music by Shenandoah’s Harambee gospel choir. Marcus Briggs-Cloud is a scholar, activist and international lecturer. He sits on various boards and committees that seek to protect the rights of Indigenous Peoples globally and has served as an Indigenous spokesperson at the United Nations. Briggs-Cloud has lectured in 16 countries and, in 2011, he was nominated for two Native American Music Awards for his Maskoke hymn album “Pum Vculvke Vrakkuecetv” (To Honor Our Elders). A graduate of Harvard Divinity School, his academic concentrations intersect liberation theology, gender theory, linguistics and post-coloniality.
All 3 p.m. classes are cancelled so students, faculty and staff can celebrate the life of Dr. King and hear Briggs-Cloud speak.
The event is free and open to the public.
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