State Representative Lipper-Garabedian Speaks at Martin Luther King Jr. Day Celebration in the Town of Wakefield
On January 19, 2026, State Representative Kate Lipper-Garabedian spoke at the Wakefield Human Rights Commission’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day Celebration, held at the Galvin Middle School. This year, the event celebrated Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Expression. Representative Lipper-Garabedian gave the following remarks:
Good morning. I am glad to be with you today to honor a pivotal leader in the story of our nation and to look to his voice and example to inform the duty we as Americans face in this current chapter and as we consider this year’s theme – Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Expression.
Today, we honor and celebrate Martin Luther King Jr., our nation’s most prominent civil rights leader whose legacy universally inspires morality and courage. We gather in Wakefield, like Americans across the country, to admire a man who challenged our nation to examine itself and work toward our founding ideals of equality, freedom, and justice.
And yet. At the time Martin Luther King orated, protested, and worked for those ideals, he was not universally revered as a moral leader. Not all Americans recognized him for his courage and righteousness. Rather, many – including elected officials in the highest offices of our nation – viewed King as someone causing trouble and posing danger. Within the lifetimes of many in this room, our federal government labeled the man who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 as one of the most dangerous persons in America.
As King charged the nation to challenge the status quo, our laws, and their implementation, our federal government was hard at work aiming to discredit him as a communist agitator, circulating this message throughout the government, across faith and business leaders, and into our living rooms. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and Attorney General Bobby Kennedy approved orders over many years that included pervasive monitoring and wiretapping, followed by threats to expose personal and private information. King was consistently followed by local law enforcement, including in his car, and was arrested approximately 30 times for civil disobedience and spurious and minor charges. A decade later, in 1976, a congressional investigation described this overall campaign against King as “one of the most abusive of all FBI programs.”
All these malicious actions at the local, state, and federal levels share one central characteristic: They aimed to repress the fundamental rights in America to freedom of speech and freedom of expression. To silence a voice and stamp out a message. The heavy hand of “the law” and its intimidation tactics attempted not only to limit the speech of King but of all Americans who believed in the principles of justice and equality that guided the Civil Rights Movement. And to instill fear in the assembly of like-minded individuals who wanted to champion this cause.
Despite these threats and oppression, Martin Luther King, Coretta Scott King, and the leaders and members of the Civil Rights Movement stood in defiance of tyranny and remained committed to the pursuit of justice for all.
60 years later, our nation faces similar headwinds. The most basic tenants of our democracy are under attack by the governmental institutions meant to serve and uphold them. We face a generational challenge coming from Washington.
Let us turn to King’s voice to guide us in these troubling times. The day before he was assassinated, April 3, 1968, at the Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee, he exclaimed in his I’ve Been to the Mountaintop speech that “All we say to America is, ‘Be true to what you said on paper….’ But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right.”
He continued, “We aren't going to let dogs or water hoses turn us around, we aren't going to let any injunction turn us around. We are going on.”
Today, we are witnessing attacks on the pillars of our democracy, a systematic dismantling of checks and balances, brazen power grabs, shameless violations of First Amendment and other constitutional rights, and the dehumanization of our family members, our neighbors, our classmates, our coworkers. Deploying violent tactics, federal agents are quelling our right to protest peacefully. This month, ICE agents in Minneapolis unjustly killed an American citizen and mother of three. That woman, Renee Nicole Good, is among the 36 individuals who have lost their lives at the hands of ICE or while in ICE custody over the last year. The Trump regime is deploying military forces against citizens and civilians, and unidentified and masked agents are inhumanely disappearing human beings, including Americans and others legally here, with no due process and the intent to instigate division and hatred.
And how are Americans to hold our federal government to account when Trump is leading relentless attacks on the freedom of our press, insisting it kowtow to his demands of fealty to have access to information and government officials. Media outlets, like the Associated Press, have been banned from the White House press room. Trump is suing media outlets of all sizes that report on topics he finds unflattering. The Administration is defunding public broadcasting. The official White House website includes a page titled “Media Offenders,” which it updates weekly to highlight the outlets and individual reporters who dare cover developments in a constructively critical manner. The Pentagon has revoked credentials for long-standing outlets, like the New York Times and NPR, that refuse to agree to publish only information approved by the military and has given their office space to new, sycophant outlets willing to parrot whatever the Administration hands them. Just this week, the FBI raided the home of a journalist.
There are striking symmetries between what we have seen and experienced over the last year and the manner in which our nation’s authorities treated Martin Luther King in his day. As it was then, dissent has been framed as disorder, and protesters are surveilled and delegitimized. Tear gas, rubber bullets, and militarized crowd control have replaced dogs and water hoses – different tools, same “law and order” logic. The pattern is familiar: when freedom of speech is exercised in ways that threaten existing power structures, authority too often responds with suppression rather than engagement.
However, we, the American people, must be stronger. As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of our nation’s founding this year, let us remember we are a country founded on political protest. Protesting injustice, pressing for representative and accountable democratic governance, it’s in our nation’s DNA. As Martin Luther King orated, “Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right.” Despite the Trump Administration’s intimidation tactics, we are protesting anyway, showing up in larger numbers as each month passes. We each have a role to play in defending our democracy. We must stand up on behalf of our neighbors. We must look for opportunities to support the champions of our freedom of speech, expression, assembly, and press – the media outlets upholding the tenets of journalistic integrity, the nonprofit organizations challenging the Trump Administration in court, the attorneys representing individuals seeking due process. In the words of Coretta Scott King, “Struggle is a never ending process. Freedom is never really won; you earn it and win it in every generation.”
Today, we pause to celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. – an American hero who challenged us to live up to this nation’s ideals, the greatest political experiment in human history. Nothing we face in this moment is more difficult that what King and the legions of ordinary men and women who marched beside him faced. His bravery and their bravery can light our path as we confront what is perhaps the greatest challenge to our democracy since that time. In 2026, it is our turn to carry the torch in pursuit of freedom and equality for future generations.
Thank you.
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