By Jeff Hall
Every year starting in early January, Brentwood resident Gary Avrech contacts me, asking for coverage of a big annual Martin Luther King event he helps organize each year.
I’m not getting any younger, so I decided I should finally just get up and go this year. I had never attended before. It was held in Santa Monica at SGI-World Peace Ikeda Auditorium, followed by a breakfast at the Fairmont Miramar.
I’m really glad I went – not only to support Gary, but because I experienced so much I don’t normally experience.
There were many great speeches and the highlighter was a young (20) African-American, Amanda Gorman. She is a graduate of New Roads School in Santa Monica, now attending Harvard University.
She is also the first ever Youth Poet Laureate ever named in the U.S. She read one of her poems onstage. It was powerful.
I thought I heard someone say Amanda has already declared that she is running for President of the United States in 2036, but the statement was so shocking I had to do some Googling when I got home.
Check it out for yourself at AmandaSCGorman.com. It’s in there. Since she’s 20 now, she’ll be 36 then – just making the cutoff. Talk about the “fierce urgency of now”!
If I’m still alive at that time, I’ll surely vote for her. She is very impressive.
Back to Gary Avrech. Gary is a well-known community activist pursuing civil rights and social justice in the little spare time he has.
By day, he’s a hard-working graphic artist and printer’s representative.
If you need fliers, stationery, business cards, signs, coffee mugs with a logo on them – anything that’s printed – Gary is your guy (see GoGraphics.net.
Go for the printing but stay for the conversation.
When you go to pick up your order, Gary always has something to say about the next women’s march, Donald Trump’s latest outrage and race relations in America. Gary has a lot of opinions, and he’s very colorful.
Almost all the big social movements in the area turn to Gary for their printing needs. So does Santa Monica College and many local businesses. I call Gary any time I need something printed.
Gary and I met decades ago – if you are in the newspaper business, you know Gary – and he used to work for a guy named Herb Chase, now in publisher heaven. Herb was a fixture in the Westside community newspaper publishing scene. He was a mentor to both Gary and me.
At the end of the Martin Luther King event, everyone in the Santa Monica auditorium joined hands and sang “We Shall Overcome.” In my entire life, I had never done that before. It was quite touching.
Thank you, Gary.
