Service projects are planned for South Los Angeles, Long Beach and Hollywood Monday to mark Martin Luther King Jr. Day in an attempt to fulfill the goal set by Congress in 1994 to make it a “day on, not a day off.”
Former Los Angeles Lakers star forward A.C. Green, the Laker Girls and more than 1,000 volunteers are expected at George Washington Carver Middle School in South Los Angeles to beautify the campus and surrounding neighborhood with painting, building, landscaping, gardening, cleaning and assembly projects.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, Los Angeles City Council President Herb Wesson and Councilmen Joe Buscaino, David Ryu, Bob Blumenfield and Mitch O’Farrell and Anthony Chavez, a grandson of the late labor leader Cesar Chavez, are also among the scheduled participants.
The ninth annual Long Beach MLK Day of Service will have projects at a record 16 sites. Projects include a beautification efforts at Jordan High School, MacArthur Park, Veterans Park and Scherer Park and cleaning up the corridors along Long Beach Boulevard, Atlantic Avenue and Orange Avenue and beach and parking lot area at Junipero Beach.
Organizers expect more than 1,200 volunteers to sort and fold more than 30,000 items of clothing at the seventh annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day Clothing Collection & Community Breakfast in Hollywood. The event will be held from 10 a.m.-1 p.m. at the headquarters of the volunteer organization Big Sunday at 6111 Melrose Ave.
The clothing folded will be donated to several organizations.
“We are in very fraught times,” said David Levinson, Big Sunday’s founder and executive director. “But at Big Sunday we keep finding that most people — of all ages, from all walks of life, and yes, different political bents — want to work together to make our world a nicer place and celebrate what we share.”