Vol. 5    No. 17
AUGUST 26, 2010

The Capital City Hues
(608) 241-2000
gramling@capitalcityhues.com


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Madison, WI 53725
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EDITORIAL STAFF

Jonathan Gramling
Publisher & Editor

Clarita G. Mendoza
Sales Manager

Contributing Writers
Rita Adair, Ike Anyanike, Paul
Barrows, Alfonso Zepeda
Capistran, Theola Carter, Fabu,
Andrew Gramling, Lang Kenneth
Haynes, Eileen Cecille Hocker,
Heidi Pascual, Jessica Pharm,
Laura Salinger, Jessica Strong, &
Martinez White

Webmaster:
Heidi @
heidipascual@sbcglobal.net
  In the center of this edition of The Capital City Hues, you will find the 2010 edition of The Diversity Times.
For three weeks during the summer, I had the privilege of teaching a workshop called “Exploring College
through Media” for the UW-Madison PEOPLE Program, which is the university’s premier program for
increase the number of students of color — as well as “first generation college bound” students — attending
and graduating from the UW-Madison.
     For three-weeks, 11 middle-school students, two college-age teaching assistants and I visited six
Madison area workplaces to explore primarily STEM occupations — science, technology, engineering and
math — learned desk-top publishing software and blogged about the experience at www.thediversitytimes.
com. The students also wrote the stories and took some of the photos published in The Diversity Times.
While it is always a challenge teaching a class and publishing several newspapers in the course of three
weeks, it is truly energizing working with these young people who will be tomorrow’s leaders. During the
workshop, they were exposed to some of the top ten careers of the future. I hope this exposure will lead
them and other students who read the paper to consider these careers. And I expect each and every one of
them to attend and graduate from a university, hopefully the UW-Madison, my alma mater.
     Please take the time to read the stories written by these young people and see what is on their minds.
And in doing so, I think you will also be filled with hope that this generation coming up will fulfill Dr. Martin
Luther King’s Dream of the beloved community where a person is judged by their character and abilities
and not by the color of their skin.
***
     Speaking of Dr. King, this Saturday marks the 47th anniversary of the March on Washington and Dr.
Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech from the Lincoln Memorial. Hundreds of thousands of people
filled the National Mall that day. That speech and March empowered and reenergized the civil rights
movement and led to the passage of many historic bills such as the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights
Act.
     Seven years ago, Heidi Pascual and I flew to Washington, D.C. to sit at the spot where Dr. King gave his
speech on the 40th anniversary of the March. There were no marches that day, in part because a rally
commemorating the March was held the previous Saturday. But still, individuals and families came to that
spot, sat and contemplated Dr. King’s speech, looked out over the National Mall and Reflecting Pool and
took measure. Surely this spot is “Hallowed Ground” for the civil rights movement.
     Now this Saturday, Glenn Beck, the very right-leaning Fox News pundit is hosting a rally at the Lincoln
Memorial and will be speaking from the spot that Dr. King gave his Dream speech. In my opinion, Beck
opposes everything that Dr. King and the civil rights movement stood for. On a gut level, it turns my
stomach that he has the nerve to give a speech at the same spot. It is as if he is purposely despoiling the
“Hallowed Ground” of the civil rights movement, an “in-your-face” gesture to a movement for which Dr.
King and so many others gave their lives, lives taken by domestic terrorist organizations like the KKK.
Yet I support Glenn Beck’s right to give his speech from that spot for to deny him his right to free speech in
a free country would go against the principles and values that Dr. King as well as the Founding Fathers of
our country espoused. I will not advocate that he go somewhere else because he is disrespecting the
memory of those who died. He has a right to give his speech there and I will support that right if I have any
belief in the principles of the Declaration of Independence at all.
     But there is one thing that I want Glenn Beck to do when he is giving that speech. I want him and those
who come to his rally to declare their support of the building of the mosque near Ground Zero in New York. It
was Christians and Muslims and people of other religions who died on September 11 when those jetliners
crashed into the Twin Towers.
     If Glenn Beck has any integrity at all and believes in the principles espoused in the U.S. Constitution, as
he speaks from the “Hallowed Ground” of the civil rights movement, he will throw his weight behind the
building of the mosque in New York. Anything less will show Glenn Beck to be the hypocritical demagogue
that he appears to be.
     The mosque in New York needs to be built. Anything less is an affront to the values this country was
founded on and will only fuel the belief in some terrorist circles that our actions of the past nine years were
anti-Islam after all.
Reflections/Jonathan Gramling
                          The Dream & Dr. King