Today, we’re here to honor the memory of an American who led the most profound social justice movement in American history.  We’re here to honor a man who changed the lives of millions of people he would never know.  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. dedicated his life – and indeed gave his life – to healing the most terrible wounds in our society.

Today, all over the nation, we march to recall Dr. King’s heroic efforts to right the wrongs of intolerance, hatred, segregation, and racial oppression.  Today, we march to recall Dr. King’s commitment to human rights, freedom, and democracy in every corner of the globe. Today, we remember a man who preached the word of God and taught us that loving God means loving our neighbors here and around the world.

Dr. King’s vision was no more prophetic than in his 1964 Nobel Peace Prize speech. In this speech he calls for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation.

In this speech he imagines a story in which, "A widely separated family inherits a house in which they have to live together." He says that this is the great new problem of humankind.

“We have inherited a big house, a great ‘world house’ in which we have to live together - black and white, Easterners and Westerners, Gentiles and Jews, Catholics and Protestants, Moslem and Hindu, a family unduly separated in ideas, culture, and interests who, because we can never again live without each other, must learn, somehow, in this one big world, to live with each other.”

Dr. King’s words invoke the challenges of our increasingly globalized world while calling us to be good neighbors right here at home. We all know how important it is to express our neighborliness right here in our own community. We must work to ensure that no one is targeted in our community for the color of their skin, or the religion that they practice.

We must work to ensure that everyone feels welcome in our neighborhoods, our schools, and our workplaces. This is what it means to care for our neighbors right here at home. This is what Martin Luther King called on us to do.

In the forty years since Dr. King was taken from us, we have made such great strides to fulfill his dream. From civil rights at home to human rights abroad, we have made important progress.

But today, as we celebrate the successes that Dr. King would have welcomed, we must also recommit ourselves to continuing his legacy. That is what we’re all here this morning to do. God Bless you.

Pictured above: (center) Congresswoman Capps meets with Central Coast firefighters to discuss emergency preparedness.