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San Diego Celebrates Martin Luther King DaySAN DIEGO (CNS) - About 1,200 people observed Martin Luther King Day today by attending the 24th annual All People's Breakfast at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront hotel Monday. The keynote speaker, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas, penned "My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant" in the New York Times Magazine last June. "We have to make sense of an immigration system that doesn't make any sense," Vargas told 10News. He said he came from the Philippines as a child and didn't realize he was in the country illegally until he was 16 and tried to apply for a learner's permit to drive. It turned out the identification card he had been given was fake. Vargas said he thought he would eventually earn citizenship by working hard, but it didn't work out that way. He said he hid his immigration status while he built his career but decided he didn't want that life anymore. The program also included short digital stories of overcoming intolerance as told by San Diegans of diverse backgrounds, including former county Supervisor Leon Williams, Viejas Tribal Chairman Anthony Pico, and Susan Madison, San Diego's Disability Services Program coordinator. Estela De Los Rios, executive director of the Center for Social Advocacy, received the San Diego Human Relations Commission's Ashley L. Walker Social Justice Award at the event. Several other organizations held events to mark King's birthdate. The slain civil rights leader would have been 83. More than 100 employees of Kaiser Permanente sorted and bagged food at the San Diego Food Bank. Others helped spruce up a home in Chula Vista for youth who have aged out of the county's foster care center, and a center for domestic violence center in Escondido. Union members affiliated with the San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council picked up trash in and around Grantville Neighborhood Park. Volunteers with the Lakeside River Park Conservancy and Americorps had a day of service to clean up trash in the bed of the San Diego River, and church groups held a clean-up day at Balboa Park. |
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