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As we approach Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I’ve been thinking less about how Dr. King is remembered and more about what his life made possible.
Dr. King had to work outside the system. He organized, marched, disrupted, and demanded moral clarity from a country that refused to grant it willingly. That work cracked open doors that were never meant to open. It created the conditions for leaders like the late SC Senator Clementa Pinckney to work inside the system, to bring the language of love, justice, and accountability into legislative chambers and church pulpits alike. And now, a generation later, his daughter Eliana is finding ways to work around the system, refusing to wait for permission to act.
That is not a break in the tradition. It is the tradition.
When Clem was murdered alongside eight parishioners at Mother Emanuel, I was the chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party, and he was a leading voice in the state senate. But titles didn’t matter that night. Clem was my friend. He was a mentor. He was someone whose faith in love as a public force shaped how many of us understood service. When the call came, I dropped to my knees in my wife’s arms. The grief was physical. Disorienting. Permanent.
Clem never got to see his daughters grow up.
So years later, sitting across from Eliana, now a thoughtful, intelligent, clear-eyed young woman, the moment carried weight beyond words. It carried a legacy. She represents not just a life continued, but a generation shaped by what her father’s generation endured and what followed after.
At one point in our conversation for At Our Table [ [link removed] ], she described her peers as part of the “9/11 generation.” A generation raised amid constant violence. Then she said something that cut straight through the noise.
“We don’t all live in fear,” she told me. “But there is a different element of awareness and on-guardness that comes with being part of this generation.”
That distinction matters.
This is not a generation defined by fragility. It is defined by alertness.
They grew up watching catastrophe unfold in real time. They practiced lockdown drills before they learned civics. They came of age as mass violence became routine rather than rare. Charleston. Sandy Hook. Parkland. Buffalo. Pulse. Uvalde. ICE shootings. Protests filling city streets. Monks walking for peace. Each event folding into the next without resolution.
Violence didn’t arrive as a shock. It arrived as a pattern.
And when something becomes a pattern, people stop being moved by symbolism.
That’s the disconnect we’re living with right now. A democracy fluent in gestures but hesitant when it comes to action. Carefully worded statements. Anniversary tweets. Perfectly calibrated condemnations. Then silence. Then repetition.
Performative empathy is not neutral. It’s corrosive.
You cannot repeatedly acknowledge pain without addressing its cause and expect people to keep trusting the system. Young people hear that clearly. They’ve grown up fluent in reading the gap between words and outcomes.
This is where frustration sets in. Not apathy. Not disengagement. Frustration rooted in moral clarity.
Being alert means recognizing patterns instead of waiting for permission. It means understanding when language is being used to soothe rather than to solve. It means refusing to confuse recognition with repair. Alertness is not rage. It is discernment sharpened by repetition.
Alertness shows up in how this generation receives power. They don’t take reassurance at face value. They listen for what’s missing as much as what’s said. They’ve learned that some language is designed to buy time rather than deliver change. That instinct doesn’t come from distrust alone. It comes from living through the same cycle often enough to recognize it before it completes itself.
This generation doesn’t need to be convinced that democracy matters. They need to be convinced that it responds.
For decades, our default instruction to young people has been simple: Vote.
Voting matters. It is foundational. It is necessary. But it has never been sufficient.
Dr. King didn’t just vote. The Civil Rights Movement didn’t just register voters. Change came from pressure, presence, and persistence. From organizing, marching, boycotting, teaching, and refusing to accept delay as destiny.
Clem carried that legacy inside the system. He believed in laws. He believed in institutions. But he never confused procedure with justice. He understood that power without accountability was hollow and that leadership meant staying connected to the people you served.
Now, a generation raised on violence is learning that democracy also requires work around the system. Protest. Art. Community organizing. Civic action that doesn’t wait for official approval. Not because institutions are irrelevant, but because our lives are not single-issue and our obligations are not singular. Voting is one expression of civic responsibility, not the sum of it. Institutions move when pressure comes from many directions at once, when people bring all of who they are into public life, not just their ballots.
This is not a rejection of democracy. It is a demand for a fuller version of it.
When “just vote” is offered as the answer to repeated violence and deep injustice, it can feel hollow, not because participation doesn’t matter, but because democracy was never meant to be passive. Voting is the floor, not the ceiling.
Democracy is a verb. It requires muscle. It requires people who are willing to stay engaged when the cameras leave and the statements stop.
And it collapses not when people disengage, but when participation is mistaken for compliance.
Dr. King worked outside the system so Clem could work inside it. Clem worked inside it so his daughters could imagine something more expansive. Each generation was asked to show courage in a different form. None of them were wrong. All of them were necessary.
A generation raised on violence understands something essential. Stability without justice is temporary. Memory without accountability is empty. Participation without power is theater.
As we mark Dr. King’s legacy, the question is not how eloquently we quote him or how reverently we commemorate him. The question is whether we are willing to practice the democracy he fought for. The demanding one. The uncomfortable one. The kind that doesn’t confuse gestures for change or voting for the whole of civic life.
Clem believed in that democracy. He lived it. He paid for it.
The generation coming up is not afraid. They are alert. And they are asking whether our democracy is awake enough to meet them where they are.
That is not a challenge to be dismissed.
It is a legacy to be honored.

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