Ellie Brown wrote a short blog post over at Marketing Conversation in support of the good work by our client, Martin Luther King, Jr., National Memorial Foundation.

Currently, they’re raise money to make sure that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the civil rights movement, makes it onto the National Mall in Washington, DC:

At a time when kids consider gun-toting athletes and cracked-out celebrities heroes and role models, it’s refreshing to hear that a true hero, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., is finally getting the official memorial he deserves.  Abraham Harrison’s client, the Washington D.C., Martin Luther King, Jr., National Memorial Foundation, is pushing for the last few million dollars needed to finish the project.

Over $106 million of the $120 million has been raised through corporate support as well as private donations from us ordinary folk.  The Foundation has devised some creative and easy ways to add your contribution including an MLK Toolbar that donates $.05 for every search you perform using the toolbar.

To find out more about the history of the Memorial, its on-going construction and ways to donate here: http://mlkmemorialnews.org/

The El-Hibri Peace Education Prize 2009 Award Winner this year is Dr. Mary Elizabeth King, “professor of peace and conflict studies at the United Nations-affiliated University for Peace, which has its main campus in Costa Rica, and distinguished scholar with the Center for Global Peace at American University in Washington, DC.” Learn more about The El-Hibri Peace Education Prize and Bethesda-resident Fuad El-Hibri.   To be considered for the 2010 prize, nominations must be received no later than June 6, 2010.

Dr. Mary Elizabeth King is professor of peace and conflict studies at the United Nations-affiliated University for Peace, which has its main campus in Costa Rica, and distinguished scholar with the Center for Global Peace at American University in Washington, DC. She is also a Rothermere American Institute Fellow at the University of Oxford, in Britain. Priorities of her work include peace education and nonviolent civil resistance.

Among Dr. King’s many publications, she is the author of the highly acclaimed, A Quiet Revolution: The First Palestinian Intifada and Nonviolent Resistance, released in 2007. Her most recent book is, The New York Times on Emerging Democracies in Eastern Europe (2009), chronicling the peaceful transitions from Soviet rule that occurred in Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, the Baltic States, Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine.

Dr. King has worked with President Jimmy Carter as a special advisor since the early 1970s, including working closely with him on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As a presidential appointee in the Carter Administration, she had worldwide oversight for the Peace Corps and other U.S. volunteer service corps programs. In the U.S. civil rights movement, she worked alongside the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, an experience that defined her life. In addition to her work in the field of peace education, she has been a practitioner of international relations for 35 years—requiring personal contact with heads of state and government ministers of more than 120 developing countries.

Dr. King earned a doctorate in international politics from the University of Wales at Aberystwyth in the United Kingdom.

In Photo: Fuad El-Hibri (Founder of the El-Hibri Peace Education Prize) and Dr. Abdul Aziz Said (First Laureate of the El-Hibri Peace Education Prize)

Purpose of the El-Hibri Peace Education Prize

To honor one peace educator annually with the El-Hibri Peace Education Prize in order to bring awareness of and to promote the expansion of the field of Peace Education.

Mission of the El-Hibri Peace Education Prize

The El-Hibri Peace Education Prize recognizes outstanding peace educators based in the United States by awarding $10,000 annually to an individual or organization making valuable contributions to peace education and social justice in the Middle East.

Goals of the El-Hibri Peace Education Prize

• Recognize outstanding peace educators who demonstrate
  successful and innovative efforts to promote peace
  and social justice
• Provide financial support for established and emerging
  peace educators to continue their work
• Promote the importance of peace education globally by
  affirming efforts to integrate knowledge about and for
  peacemaking into curricula at all levels of education

The El-Hibri Peace Education Prize

The El-Hibri Peace Education Prize is awarded each fall in Washington, D.C.

Winners will be selected based on nominations and interviews with references who can speak to their contributions to the field of Peace Education.

Who is Eligible for the El-Hibri Peace Education Prize?

Nominees can be individuals or organizations based in the United States making valuable contributions to the theory, practice, and teaching of
peace and social justice in the Middle East.

Notification of El-Hibri Peace Education Prize Award

El-Hibri Peace Education Prize winners will be recognized at the annual El-Hibri Peace Education Prize ceremony.

2008 El-Hibri Peace Education Prize Recipient

The El-Hibri Charitable Foundation and the El-Hibri family wish to congratulate Scott Kennedy, the second recipient of the El-Hibri Peace Education Prize. Scott Kennedy has been a Peace Educator for 40 years. He was instrumental in pioneering educational delegations to conflict zones, now a widely practiced form of peace education. He has personally led more than three dozen delegations to the Middle East since 1979. He also helped establish Witness for Peace, which brought thousands of US citizens to Nicaragua on short term educational delegations.

He co-founded the Resource Center for Nonviolence in Santa Cruz, California which is one of the most active community-based peace education centers in the U.S. The Center has been host to countless speakers, workshops, and programs focusing on the peaceful and just resolution of conflicts locally and around the world. Scott has actively served on the boards of many organizations that teach and exemplify peace and empowerment, including the Fellowship of Reconciliation, Middle East Witness, Refuser Solidarity Network, Middle East Advisory Committee of the American Friends Service Committee, Isla Vista Youth Project, Isla Vista Children’s Center, Thomas Merton Unity (Nonviolence) Center, the Isla Vista People’s Life Fund, California Youth Advocate Program, National Youth Advocate Program, and the Interfaith Peace-Builders.

Scott is a former mayor of Santa Cruz, California where he resides with his wife Kristin. They have 3 grown children.

2007 El-Hibri Peace Education Prize Recipient

The El-Hibri Peace Education Prize committee wishes to congratulate Professor Abdul Aziz Said, the First Laureate of this award.
He serves as the Mohammed Said Farsi Chair of Islamic Peace at American University in Washington, DC, and receives this honor in recognition of his dedication to the causes of peace, his preeminent role in educating about peace and Islam, and his 50 years as a faculty mentor and teacher at American University.

“… life is a path of learning where we are each constantly called upon to awaken ourselves and each other to search for freedom, truth, beauty, creativity, and above all, justice.”

Abdul Aziz Said

The Actual El-Hibri Peace Education Prize

• $10,000
• Promotion and publicity through media activities, speaking engagements and other important networking opportunities to raise awareness of peace education and the honoree’s contributions within the field.

Timeline for 2010 El-Hibri Peace Education Prize

June 6, 2010: Nomination deadline

July 11, 2010: Prize winner notification

September 21, 2010: Prize presented annually on the International Day of Peace

The El-Hibri Peace Education Prize Nomination Process

Complete the nomination form and submit by email or mail.

Nominations must be received no later than June 6, 2010.

Nominations, questions, and financial contributions may be sent to:

Email: nonviolence@igc.org

Mailing Address:
The El-Hibri Peace Education Prize
PO Box 39127
Friendship Station
Washington, DC 20016 USA

Phone: +1 (202) 244.0951

The ‘I Have a Dream’ Speech by Martin Luther King, Jr, in 1963

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. They have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.

As we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied, as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating “For Whites Only”. We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning, “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.”

And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!

Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!

But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

I just read on the wire that “India’s Sensitive Index tumbled 2,029.05 points, or 11.5%, to 15,576.30 in the early minutes, forcing trade to be halted for an hour” which might act as an indicator that the US and European markets may well plunge when they’re opened in the morning. Hopefully, the automatic safe guards will prevent too much of a run in the market. Quite a few people believe that Martin Luther King, Junior, again has saved the day as his birthday on Monday kept the financial markets closed in the US, possibly protecting it from the worst of it. Via the New York Times

Asian stocks extends losses into a second day

By V. Phani Kumar , MarketWatch

Last Update: 11:51 PM ET Jan 21, 2008

HONG KONG (MarketWatch) — Asian stocks came under relentless selling pressure for the second straight session on Tuesday, a day after fears the U.S. economy could slip into a recession triggered a sell-off that spread to Europe and Latin America.

India’s Sensitive Index tumbled 2,029.05 points, or 11.5%, to 15,576.30 in the early minutes, forcing trade to be halted for an hour. The index had finished 7.4% lower in the previous session, after dropping as much as 11% during the day.

“It doesn’t look good at all. We expected it to fall, but nobody expected this kind of correction,” said Sharmila Joshi, a trader with Prabhudas Lilladher in Mumbai.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 average tumbled 4.8% to 12,682.47, while the broader Topix index skidded 4.6% to 1,233.99 in afternoon trading. Earlier in the day, the Nikkei dropped as low as 12,666.09 — its lowest level since September 2005.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index slumped 8% to 21,914.28 as the sell-off deepened from the previous session, when it tumbled 5.5%. The Hang Seng China Enterprises Index plummeted 11.9% to 11,927.55. See related story.

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 extended losses into the 12th straight session, slumping 5.8% to 5,257.80 and New Zealand’s NZX 50 index ran its losses into the 14th session, dropping 1.1% at 3,607.13, while South Korea’s Kospi shed 4.8% at 1,602.93.

China’s Shanghai Composite, which fell more than 5% in the previous session, sank 4.1% to 4,714.30, Taiwan’s Weighted index tumbled 6.4% to 7,585.93 and Singapore’s Straits Times index lost 4.4% at 2,789.31, while Indonesia’s JSX Composite tumbled 8.3% to 2,279.27.

Tim Rocks, regional strategist for Macquarie Research, said investors were likely to worry about the impact of a U.S. economic slowdown on exporters in Asia.

“Whenever you have got any kind of disappointment in global growth, you always have big downgrades across Asia and particularly in the export-dominated markets,” said Rocks. “On a six-month view, we’re still going to have a lot of earnings downgrades in Asia, linked to the U.S. cycle.”

Rocks said hopes of interest rate action from the U.S. Federal Reserve is “the next great hope for the markets now,” adding that an interest rate cut by the Fed would “certainly be a break for the markets.”

Regional detail

Financials came under selling pressure across the region, with shares of Mizuho Financial Group (8411)(MFG) sinking 4.5% in Tokyo, Macquarie Group (MQG) slumping 9.2% in Sydney and Kookmin Bank (KB) shares dropping 3.4% in Seoul.

In Hong Kong, shares of market heavyweight HSBC Holdings (5)(HBC) tumbled 6.2%, while Singapore’s DBS Group Holdings shed 4.6%.

The decline in crude oil and metal prices hurt resource stocks as well, with Woodside Petroleum (WPL)(WOPEY) plummeting 8.3% and Rio Tinto (RIO)(RTP) slumping 9.2% in Sydney, while shares of commodities trader Marubeni Corp. (8002) dropped 5.6% in Tokyo. In Hong Kong, shares of PetroChina Co. (857)(PTR) plummeted 10.8% and Aluminum Corp. of China (ACH)(2600) stumbled 12.1%, while in Seoul, Posco (PKX) shares dropped 3.2%.

Japanese exporters also ranked among losers in Tokyo, with shares of Toyota Motor Corp. (7203)(TM) dropping 4.6% and Sony Corp. (6758)(SNE) fell 5.1% on concerns over the yen’s rally recently.

In currency trading, the U.S. dollar gained 0.6% to 106.29, recovering some of its recent losses against the Japanese currency, while the Australian dollar rose 0.3% at 91.52 yen.

Crude oil prices fell below the $90 a barrel level in electronic trading on worries related to U.S. demand. February futures of the commodity were recently $2.06 lower at $88.51 a barrel.

In the previous session, European stocks suffered their largest one-day decline since Sept. 11, 2001, with the pan-European Dow Jones Stoxx 600 index ending down 5.4% at 309.67 on heavy losses in banks and insurance firms.

In Canada, the S&P/Toronto Stock Exchange composite index sank 604.98 points, or 4.7% to end at 12,132.14. Brazil’s Bovespa sank 6.6% to 53.694, while Mexico’s Bolsa index fell 4.8% to 25,444. See related story.

U.S. markets are closed Monday for the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday.

Varahabhotla Phani Kumar is a reporter in MarketWatch’s Hong Kong bureau.