Can volunteering to make a blanket in Winnetka for the homeless in Chicago combat social injustice?
William Traynor said he believes it can. With his young daughter, Kylie, and niece Erin, by his side, Traynor and several hundred others knuckled down at the Winnetka Community House on Martin Luther King Day for a day of service.
“It’s very important growing up knowing that there are social injustices in the world and that anything we can do to help is a step forward,” Traynor said.
Similar events are held across the country each year to honor the slain civil rights leader while keeping alive his message of service as a way to help combat inequality.
Winnetka’s day was organized by the Winnetka Volunteer Center, The Kindness Connection, The Winnetka Historical Society and Winnetka Community House. It featured a number of opportunities for volunteers, including making blankets for the homeless, making pet toys, valentines for veterans, writing letters to current military members and making jewelry for women and children in safe housing, among others.
It also featured the screening of a PBS program detailing how people from the north suburbs volunteered in the 1960s to work on the sometimes violent frontlines of the civil rights movement.
Lisa Rosenberg of The Kindness Connection, said that if King were alive today he might say that his dream of social justice for all is “a work in progress.”
“There’s a lot of people who are working on that and there’s some people who aren’t,” she said. “We’re trying to honor him in the way we can in this community.”
Gail Schechter, executive director of Open Communities, a Winnetka-based not-for-profit fair housing organization, said racial equality has come a long way since King spoke to 8,000 people on the Winnetka village green 50 years ago. But there is still a long way to go, especially in housing, she said, pointing out that while Evanston and Skokie have diverse populations, racial stereotyping and the lack of affordable housing in Winnetka, Kenilworth, Highland Park and other north suburbs are creating problems. People of color believe they can’t afford to live in the area and some realtors treat racial groups differently, she said.
“People who are African American get shown fewer homes,” she said. “They don’t get calls back.”
At the same time, she said, laws restricting parking along the lakefront in communities from Kenilworth to Highland Park are having the very real effect of closing it off to people from outside those communities.
“Parking can absolutely be used to exclude people,” she said.
George Pearce and his wife Mary, of Wilmette, participated in the day of service as a way to honor an “inspirational figure, “they said.
“I think it’s pretty unusual for someone to be willing to stand up when it’s difficult and to stand up for something you believe in,” George Pearce said. “I think that’s very hard. It would be hard for me to do.
“Most of my neighborhood is not African American, so I think that’s why he intentionally came up here 50 years ago to speak,” he said.
