LEWISTON — Many local events are planned for Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday.
From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., the Maine Immigrant and Refugee Services of Lewiston will hold its fourth annual MLK Jr. Day at the MEIRS Youth and Family Center at 256 Bartlett St. and at Longley Elementary School gymnasium, Birch Street.
Activities include soccer instruction and tournaments, a running clinic for girls, basketball, sewing and arts and crafts, English language conversations for parents, mock immigration interviews and citizenship classes.
Bates College will host talks, services and performances Sunday and Monday, all free and open to the public, including:
* 7 to 8 p.m. Sunday, interfaith service at Bates Chapel on College Street. Florida State University professor Jamil Drake will deliver a sermon titled “The Irony of an American Celebration.”
* 9 to 10:30 a.m. Monday, keynote speech, “The Education Imperative: Dreaming a New Public Education Dream” by Na’ilah Suad Nasir, president of the Spencer Foundation, Peter Gomes Chapel.
* 10:45 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. Monday, workshop on youth-led restorative practices at Lewiston High School, given by 21st Century Leaders, a student group at Lewiston High School that is working to improve school discipline policies, Commons 211.
* 10:45 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. Monday, workshop on working with New Mainers; training helps prepare attendees for engagement across cultural differences, led by Lisa Day and Ayman Nijim of Maine Immigrant and Refugee Services, Pettingill G50.
* 2 to 3:30 p.m. Monday, “Athletic Activism: Sporting Protest as Pedagogy,” panel discussion of athlete protests as a form of social and political education, led by departments of anthropology and athletics and programs in African-American studies, Pettengill G52.
* 3:45 to 5 p.m. Monday, the Rev. Dr. Benjamin Elijah Mays, Class of 1920, debate, ever-popular contest between Morehouse and Bates students honoring civil rights pioneer Dr. Mays, a Bates debater and longtime president of Morehouse College; free but tickets required, Olin Concert Hall. This year’s motion: “This house supports racially homogeneous schools.”
For the full schedule of MLK Jr. Day events at Bates College, go to: http://www.bates.edu/mlk/.
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