Black Lives Matter protests, a proposed ban on Muslims in the United States and a presidential endorsement from the Ku Klux Klan.

The events of 2016 were in stark contrast to eight years ago during a time when the nation elected its first African-American president.

Now, as Federal Way prepares for its Martin Luther King Jr. Day event on Jan. 16, the question lingers: Does this annual celebration of diversity, unity and freedom feel different?

“I would say in a lot of ways it makes it much more relevant and real that we’re having the conversations about differences, especially in light of events related to our election, no matter which side of the fence you sit on, as well as the conversations happening in our schools,” Superintendent Dr. Tammy Campbell, one of the speakers for the Martin Luther King Day event, said. “We’re the most diverse district in the state, and this is a conversation our scholars and families are having all the time.”

Campbell said she doesn’t dare speak for Dr. King, but, as someone who admired him from afar and studied his work, she hopes King would tell Americans “to walk to the conversation, not away from the conversation, to walk to one another, not away from each other, to see our commons interest, more importantly, to see our humanity.”

When King talks about seeing little black and white boys and girls playing together, Campbell said she thinks he is saying we’re all human beings and that we “cannot make each other so foreign that we don’t see that common humanity.”

“We gotta get out of our boxes,” Campbell said. “We’ve got to stop thinking about the way we see the world and only the way we see the world. We have to have eyes and hearts of empathy where we’re curious about who is our neighbor, who may be a different social economic class, a different race, different sexual orientation, different language. We have to say, ‘How do they see the world’ and not be so quick to judge here.”

Although Mayor Jim Ferrell, also a speaker at the event, said he doesn’t feel this year is different than others, he did say there will always be voices out there who want to divide us, but that we should dismiss them.

“I don’t think we should succumb to the temptation of negativity,” Ferrell said. “We need to rally as a community – black, white, Latino – and bring the community together about the things we can agree on, and where there is negativity, where there is those forces of darkness and oppression in different parts of the country, I think that we just need to reject that negativity.”

If King was alive today, Ferrell believes he would look at under-represented communities and look for avenues for getting them out of situations of being impoverished and being discriminated against. Those avenues would focus on “education, jobs and bolstering inner cities” to help people find opportunities.

Ferrell said he will focus on two points at the Martin Luther King Day event: the national motto, “e pluribus unum,” meaning “from many, we are one,” and the second, “The only thing you really have control over in your life is your attitude,” which Ferrell said is represented in the letter King wrote from the Birmingham, Alabama, jail in 1963.

Instead of thinking about King’s “I have a dream” speech, what comes to Ferrell’s mind when he thinks about King is that letter, which shows his “principled, positive approach” in a time where others were responding with violence.

Campbell said she plans to talk about why it is critical for Federal Way and the nation’s survival to find whatever it takes to bridge the divide of difference because “the fewer divides, the greater our power is to innovate and improve this city.”

“We have to remember it’s bigger than a day,” she said. “This is about how do we want to live every day. We can’t just show up and say some platitudes and then we’re back in our camp. We’ve got to be willing to walk in alignment with our words every day of the year.”

In addition to Campbell and Ferrell, Advancing Leadership CEO Lawrence Garrett will also be speaking. The event will take place from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on Jan. 16 at Todd Beamer High School after a weekend-long food drive starting Jan. 14.