Speech given by Joan Simon at the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 97th birthday commemoration at the library on January 17, 2026
It is an honor to represent South Bay Jewish Voice for Peace and the San Jose Peace and Justice Center.
This year, we celebrate Martin Luther King Day in challenging times. We face challenges to the successes that were won in the past, as the Trump Administration attempts to delegitimize our celebration by ending free admission to our National Parks on this special day, AND as some federal agencies pause activities related to MLK Day, Black History Month, Juneteenth, LGBTQ Pride Month, and any programs perceived to be related to promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion.
As the Trump Administration attacks diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in our schools, universities, and businesses, Jewish Voice for Peace and the San Jose Peace and Justice Center stand with our diverse communities: People of color, immigrants, our LGBTQ community, indigenous people, women, our disabled community, people who suffer the brunt of a caste system, and many more.
On April 4, 1967, Dr. King, speaking at the Riverside Church in New York City, said, “I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos WITHOUT HAVING FIRST spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government.”
In this spirit, Jewish Voice for Peace and the San Jose Peace and Justice Center struggle against U.S. imperialist wars and struggle for the liberation of ALL people.
And notably, we struggle for Palestinian liberation, fighting racist, settler colonialism known as Zionism, which seeks to either murder, or remove Palestinian people off land that Palestinians have been living on for generations. We condemn the murder of tens of thousands, probably more, of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, including women, children, the elderly, members of the press, and those who were ill and being treated in hospitals. We condemn the destruction of these hospitals, and schools and universities, and other institutions that facilitate the life and culture of Palestinian people. We call this out for what it is: a genocide. We condemn our own government, both Republican and Democratic administrations, for facilitating, financing, and providing cover for this genocide, the apartheid state of Israel, and Zionism.
Here in California, we opposed Assembly Bill 715, which became law on October 7th of last year, which is an attack on freedom of speech and will essentially prohibit discussion, in public schools, of the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Around the world, we support the struggles of people, and especially in South America, to maintain control of their own governments and their natural resources, against foreign exploitation.
Here, at home, we have to fight against the illegal roundup, detention, and deportation of members of our community, that has led ICE to use gestapo tactics, such as murdering the community activist in Minneapolis, Renee Nicole Good.
In his 1967 speech “Beyond Vietnam,” Dr. King called the Vietnam War an “enemy of the poor,” in part because it drained resources from domestic social programs. And we see this today in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. This law gives 170 billion dollars to federal agencies for anti-immigration enforcement, detention, and deportation, WHILE at the same time, it does not fund health care subsidies for the Affordable Care Act.
All these issues are linked together in our fight against the fascist takeover of our country.
The Trump administration’s attack on diversity, equity, and inclusion is part of its total attack on workers, the true source of our prosperity. Attacks on DEI pits one group of workers against another, NOT on the real problem, which is the inequitable distribution of our collective prosperity, BUT on the superficial differences among us, such as the way you look, or your sexual identity, or your legal status.
Speaking to the Board of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference on March 30th, 1967, Dr. King said, “The evils of capitalism are as real as the evils of militarism and racism. The problems of racial injustice and economic injustice cannot be solved without a radical redistribution of political and economic power.”
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion should be treasured, not attacked, for it contains a seed for our mutual prosperity. By learning about the world through the experiences of a diversity of people, we can better understand and appreciate each other for a better world.
This is why we condemn the firing of Professor Sang Hae Kil, a tenured member of San Jose State University’s Department of Justice Studies. Professor Kil was a faculty advisor to San Jose State University’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, and she acted as a liaison between the students and the university administration. For her speech and conduct related to the Gaza genocide, she was wrongfully terminated for her support of the Palestinian people.
As Dr. King said in his speeches, this struggle is not only for the civil rights of our population. It is bound up with the struggle for liberation, economic equality, and justice for ALL people.