Looking back, looking forward at Elgin Martin Luther King breakfast

Elgin's annual prayer breakfast Saturday was a celebration of the life and teachings of Martin Luther King, but another black leader also was on the minds of many of the event's speakers.

As vendors outside sold Obama memorabilia, local religious and political leaders at the prayer breakfast cast Barack Obama's impending inauguration as a fulfillment - if only in part - of King's dream.

Now, 46 years later, people around the world celebrate "a man who said, 'Yes we can, yes we can, yes we can,' to Dr. King's dream," said the Rev. Geraldine Crider in her keynote address.

"He is going to stand on the very steps that slaves built 200 years before," Crider added, referring to Obama's Tuesday inauguration in front of the U.S. Capitol building. "Praise God."

But Saturday's speakers stressed that the struggle for equality is far from over, despite Obama's historic achievement.

"Regardless of what progress we've made, there are miles left to go," Elgin Mayor Ed Schock said as he welcomed guests to the breakfast.

Several religious leaders challenged the roughly 150 guests gathered at Elgin Community College to be active campaigners for civil rights instead of merely observers, in the spirit of King's quote: "He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it."

While noting that "change has come to America," the Rev. Dee Clark, chaplain at Provena St. Joseph Hospital in Elgin, told the crowd: "We are all called to be ministers of reconciliation. We are called to be peacemakers."

Indeed, with the ongoing turmoil in the Middle East and U.S.-led wars on two fronts, peace was a recurring theme Saturday.

The organizers of the prayer breakfast presented South Elgin resident Bettina Perillo with a humanitarian award for her work with the Fox Valley Citizens for Peace.

Perillo has been critical of local high schools for allowing military recruiters to visit students without giving them a complete picture of the risks of joining the armed services.

Crider, in her keynote speech, challenged her audience to turn off the television after Obama's inauguration and take the same principled stands on the issues of their day that King took during his life.

"We praise King for standing up against the Vietnam War. What about you?" Crider said. "What about your dream? What about your legacy? What about your purpose?"

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