If you love Dr. King, put your hands in the air, like this!
The Martin Luther King Day Parade starts about a block from our house (On MLK Boulevard, natch), but this was the first year I've had the day off and so been able to attend. Have I mentioned how much I enjoy being a public servant?
So, impressions:
Black cheerleaders are the bomb. The range of body types is so happy-making. But what about girls who want to play the drums? My favorite are the neighborhood all-age groups -- little tiny kids who aren't totally clear on the concept, all the way up through high school, in matching uniforms.
Alpha Kappa Alpha: still fabulous after all these years. But why no steppers? We had frats, and we had steppers, but no frat steppers. And that's sad.
The best float was for a food bank -- people dressed as giant boxes of corn flakes. Unfortunately, our own favorite organization, the Community Mediation Program, was right behind the giant food, which completely overshadowed and out-shouted our peeps.
Speaking of our peeps, the turnout for CMP was pretty poor, and the float was not at all fabulous. I think we are going to have to help out next year.
Triple-A was handing out Chapstick. Go figure.
Baltimore is so fucking segregated. There was only a tiny sprinkling of white faces among the spectators, and we were probably at the whitest spot on the parade route.
The white people in the crowd and in the parade mostly consisted of the Usual Suspects: A guy stumping for Kucinich. Another guy getting signatures to abolish the death penalty. And the following all-white parade contingents: Women in Black. Veterans for Peace. The Green Party. I hate it when people act like they know what Dr. King would have thought about something, but I feel pretty confident that he would have thought that sucked. I did see two (apparently; never assume) white girls on one of the step teams, though, and that gave me hope.