Greetings Family,
Happy New Year! I hope you’re doing well. I know we’re a few weeks in, but the year is still young. We have many days left to move with intention, to grow, to stretch, and to make this year count in ways that matter.
I meant to write sooner, but I got sick the day before Christmas and had no choice but to sit down. Being still felt good, so I kept that energy for a while. The end of last year and the beginning of this one have been personally refreshing for me. But politically… whew.
We’re fresh off the MLK holiday weekend, and that holiday always gets me heated. Why? Because it often turns into a cycle of obligatory gatherings and surface-level celebrations. Dr. King’s legacy gets reduced to a quote, a parade, a post, a breakfast, and a Monday off to commemorate a “dream.”
And listen, I know some amazing people who coordinate these events across the country. No shade. Truly. But I do feel called to push the envelope. Martin Luther King Jr. was not a passive dreamer. He was a freedom fighter. He was unapologetically anti-racist, increasingly anti-capitalist, boldly anti-war, and deeply committed to eradicating poverty. His thinking evolved. His courage deepened. And as his convictions sharpened, so did the risks he was willing to take on behalf of Black people, poor people, and oppressed people across the globe.
King stood with workers. He challenged empire. He spoke plainly about violence and exploitation at home and abroad. And he did it knowing the cost. Honoring him requires practice, not just remembrance.
Beyond a holiday, and feel-good gatherings, we should be asking ourselves:
How do we exercise the King in ourselves?
How do we stretch our courage?
How do we stand for people, even when it’s inconvenient, unpopular, or costly?
THIS MAN SACRIFICED HIS LIFE so that we could live better, and yet so many people only know him through carefully selected sound bites deemed “safe.” That’s not just unfortunate. It’s actually dangerous. Our gatherings should include book studies, critical analysis, and honest engagement with his work, not just once a year in mid-January.
King took no days off. The irony is in the room.
So yes, let’s gather. Let’s eat. Let’s fellowship. But let’s also do the deeper work that honors him by equipping us to pick up where he left off, in the ways we can. Let’s make sure no child is left behind, thinking Dr. King was simply a man who “had a dream.” That reductionism is disrespectful at best and intellectually lazy at worst.
I wasn’t able to send our newsletter during Kwanzaa last month, but the principles should be practiced throughout the year. So I’m right on time. Some of you know that kuumba, creativity, is my favorite principle. Kuumba reminds us that creativity isn’t limited to art. It’s imagination, problem-solving, and vision. It’s refusing to accept the world as it is simply because that’s how it’s been handed to us.
It takes creativity to push past societal limitations and the ones we quietly place on ourselves. It takes creativity to build the lives we want and the communities and world we say we desire, especially in a social and political climate that is violent, vile, oppressive, and at times, absurd.
And now for the fun part.
It’s Aquarius season! And as an Aquarius, I must inform you that: Aquarius energy asks better questions. It challenges the status quo. It imagines forward even when the present feels bleak. I try my best not to live in the doom and gloom of it all. I also don’t believe in avoidant optimism. I believe we can tell the truth about where we are and still choose to create something better.
So as we move further into this year, my intentions are:
More literacy
More advocacy
More political education
More possibilities
More love
That is our work.
That has always been the work.
Thank you for your patience, your presence, and your continued belief in this Village. I’m grateful to be back in conversation with you, and I’m looking forward to what we will build together.
In Strength and Solidarity,
Starr Armstrong
Founder | Clever Communities in Action
If you’re interested in doing a local or virtual book study with us on Dr. King’s final book, or if you’d like support starting one with your neighbors, family, students, organization, or church, please reach out.
In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., isolated himself, rented a house in Jamaica with no telephone, and labored over his final manuscript. In this significantly prophetic work, we find King’s acute analysis of American race relations and the state of the movement after a decade of civil rights efforts.
Click here.