Record number volunteer for King Day projects

One day before Barack Obama's inauguration as the nation's first African-American president, a record 65,000 volunteers across the region wielded hammers, grocery bags, sewing needles and paint brushes in honor of the late Dr. Martin Luther King's vision of opportunity and world peace.

As they have in ever-growing numbers since the Greater Philadelphia King Day of Service began 14 years ago, volunteers visited shut-ins, cleaned homeless shelters, painted murals and collected food for the hungry.

"This is a day to help people instead of being lazy," said John Victor, 11, as he and his schoolmates from Doane Academy in Burlington City fanned out across the Palmyra Cove Nature Center picking up litter.

"If there's any day to do this, it should be this day," said his friend Connor Newman as light snow fell on their search for plastic bags and soda bottles blown inland from the Delaware River.

Many of today's volunteers marked the confluence of King Day and Inauguration Day with the official T-shirt of the service day. It featured an image of both Obama and King, with King's larger image glancing sidelong and Obama's gazing forward.

"We gave out 50,000 of these," said Todd Bernstein, founder and director of the service day, who sported one of the shirts.

Bernstein, president of the group Global Citizen that coordinates the service day, said the number of area volunteers had swollen by 15,000 over last year, an increase for he which credits Obama's recent calls for greater public service in the face of mounting economic hardship.

Bernstein was stationed in a glass booth overlooking the floor of Temple University's Peter Liacouras Center, where about 3,000 people participated in 150 projects between 9 a.m. and noon.

Some were as simple as schoolchildren coloring pictures of King, but the centerpiece of the Temple event was construction of a playground set that will be installed at the Winchester Recreation Center on 15th Street between York and Dauphin Streets in Fishtown.

At the George Washington Carver Community Center in Norristown, some of the 150 volunteers who turned out to give the place a new coat of paint saw their service as emblematic of the link between King Day and Obama's inauguration.

"It's a wonderful thing to celebrate the life of the man who changed America and the man who is following in his footsteps in a miraculous way," said volunteer John Driscoll of Bridgeport. "I can't believe I lived this long to see it."

Norristown residents raised funds and built the Carver center and its outdoor pool in 1960, 16 years after two African-American youngsters drowned in a local quarry. The two went swimming there after they were turned away from a racially segregated pool.

Garland Jones, a retired truck driver from Norristown, brought his 13-year-old daughter Malyric to help.

Today, he will take Malyric out of school to attend a local inauguration event. "It's so beautiful that these two days coincide," Jones said.

In Upper Merion Township, members of the Brandywine Peace Community led the group's annual Martin Luther King Day peace demonstration outside the King of Prussia division of Lockheed Martin Corp., the world's largest military contractor.

About 40 demonstrators held signs, sang protest songs and listened to speeches by King played over a loudspeaker. The peace community was joined by about 20 members of New Jerusalem Laura, a substance-abuse recovery program in North Philadelphia run by Sister Margaret McKenna, a Brandywine member.

After about an hour of demonstrating on the sidewalk, about 12 of the protesters moved to block the Lockheed Martin driveway.

Waiting police took the protesters into custody as their fellow demonstrators sang "We Shall Overcome," and "Down by the Riverside." Each was issued a citation for criminal trespass and released.

King's commitment to non-violence - he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 - was also at the heart of a morning volunteer project at the Anti-Violence Partnership of Philadelphia.

There, at its Center City offices on Hamilton Street, a dozen volunteers from The Vanguard Group of mutual funds helped children who have lost family members to violence paint images of peace.

"It's my cousin's house," said Taleya Byrd, 10, as she worked on an image of a smiling girl playing in a sunlit house.

Across the table, Diondre Worrell had drawn a mountain and was spelling out the words "Barack Obama" in the foreground. "He's our president," said Diondre, whose mother was murdered by her boyfriend about 14 months ago. "It makes me feel peaceful."

At another table, Jamere Collins, whose 17-year-old brother Jamile was shot to death two years ago, used pastels to produce an abstract image of six squares: blue, orange, yellow, green, purple and rusty brown. "I just thought they were peaceful," he explained.

Later, the partnership staff and volunteers made a mobile of the children's favorite images and hung it from a ceiling.

"We have 850 volunteers working on 52 projects," said Sarah Snyder, a Vanguard project manager who coordinates the firm's day of service effort.

Bernstein said that for the second year in a row, Vanguard had turned out more volunteers than any other employer in the region and praised it as a "model of corporate citizenship."

He said Global Citizen was also launching a new, year-round initiative, MLK 365, to connect volunteers with ongoing service opportunities.

"Dr. King was engaged 365 days a year," said Bernstein. "To honor his legacy, we should honor the energy to be engaged throughout the year.