By Sunayana Prabhu
EATONTOWN – The YMCA of Greater Monmouth County celebrated the life and legacy of civil rights leader the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. by honoring community leaders and students striving to uphold his ideals.
Hundreds of people were in attendance in the grand ballroom at the Sheraton Eatontown for the 34th annual memorial breakfast Jan. 13. The speaker for the event was the Rev. Dale Caldwell, pastor of Covenant United Methodist Church in Plainfield. Multiple awards were presented to community leaders for their efforts to uphold King’s principles and ideals.
State Sen. Vin Gopal (D- 11) received the Social Responsibility Award. Gopal recently announced his re-election campaign. He is the first South Asian American to be elected to the state senate.
Currently serving his second term as a Democratic senator from Monmouth County, Gopal has helped secure critical funding for education and mental health services and championed the rights of underserved populations in his district and throughout New Jersey, including property tax rebates for seniors and veterans.
At the awards reception, Gopal spoke about some of King’s “original beliefs of making sure everyone’s treated equally” and striding ahead in an increasingly divided world. Gopal said he has come to an understanding, even with people who strongly disagree with him across partisan lines. “I’m really proud I sponsored the most bipartisan bill signed into law,” he said. “I’ve had more Republican sponsors, even though we disagree on some really strong issues. I’ll try to see where we agree and I think it’s helped a lot.”
The Rev. Kerwin Webb, who serves as youth and young adult pastor at the Second Baptist Church of Asbury Park, received the MLK Human Dignity Award. Webb is president of the Greater Red Bank NAACP and works as an education specialist for Interfaith Neighbors, a nonprofit community organization in Asbury Park.
The YMCA Togetherhood Champion Award was presented to Yulissa and Jayden Gomez of Eatontown, volunteers in the YMCA Togetherhood initiative, for their time and commitment to addressing emerging needs in the community.
After a virtual format for two years due to COVID-19, the Y held the event in person this year.
“The Y is proud to bring our community together again in person to honor Dr. King, to reflect on his principles and to recognize change leaders in our community who take action to build a stronger, more cohesive community for all,” said Laurie Goganzer, president and chief executive officer of the YMCA of Greater Monmouth County.
MLK Essay Contest Winners
Nathan Chertog, a sophomore at Academy of Allied Health & Sciences, a Monmouth County Vocational School, and Annabel Sparano, a freshman at Trinity Hall, won the annual MLK Essay Contest, open to all high school students in greater Monmouth County. They were each awarded a $1,500 academic scholarship, sponsored by Hackensack Meridian Health, New Jersey Natural Gas and PorterPlus Realty, and a year-long membership to the YMCA.
The essay theme was about the impacts of violence directed at racial, ethnic and religious groups and how to find solutions to reduce the growing incidents.
Both the students received a standing ovation at the event after they presented their essays which discussed experiences being on the receiving end of antisemitic and racial slurs, the impact of internalized racial hatred and possible solutions to arrest discrimination.
The only way is by “communicating” and collectively abiding “zero-tolerance” for any discrimination, Sparano wrote in her essay.
In it she detailed how she was mocked by some boys for her skin color. “Others witnessed the event, perhaps sympathized with me, but said nothing,” she wrote. “Our society needs therapy in this sense.”
Chertog shared an incident in his essay recalling antisemitic slurs hurled at him and his mother as they were leaving temple. “I stood helplessly in disbelief,” he wrote, adding that a teenager threw Chertog’s yarmulke on the ground. “Why?” he asked his mother who replied, “They were taught to hate Jews.”
The incident made him wonder “how someone so young learns to hate Jewish people.” Chertog wrote that his grandparents had survived the Holocaust and immigrated to the United States “full of hope” that his parents wouldn’t have to be afraid of being Jewish anymore. But in a climate of growing antisemitism, his generation is the third facing discrimination.
Chertog runs the organization AlwaysBeYou.net that not only celebrates diversity but provides recent hate crime statistics, steps to report a hate crime and educational resources. He wrote the way to combat hatred is education. “Schools should expand and improve Holocaust education, teach the kids about all racial, ethnic and religious groups’ extraordinary contributions to our society.”
The article originally appeared in the January 19 – 25, 2023 print edition of The Two River Times.
