We were so excited to see this awesome story by NBC News about Ken Tanabe’s efforts to get Loving Day recognized as a federal holiday as well as featuring Loving Day celebrations across the country including the Mixed Remixed Festival!
We hope that you will take five seconds and sign the petition so that President Obama will address the question. This is the time! We need you to sign your names by June 30! Hurry. Sign here.
‘Loving Day’ Petition Launched in Hope of Broader Recognition
by SYLVIA CUNNINGHAM
When Heidi Durrow gets sent articles from the Google Alert she set up for “mixed race families,” it’s usually not very good news.
Durrow, author of the New York Times best-seller “The Girl Who Fell From the Sky,” said oftentimes she’ll see lists of “all the things multiracial people don’t want to hear,” or backlash towards companies like Old Navy for featuring an interracial family in an advertisement.
“I think it would be great to have a national spotlight on the ways in which we’re all connected and give us an opportunity to celebrate that for a moment as opposed to just talking about it when it becomes a flashpoint for hatred or anger or violence,” Durrow said.
Ken Tanabe, who founded Loving Day in commemoration of the landmark Supreme Court case which struck down laws banning interracial marriage, is one person fighting alongside Durrow to make that wish a reality.
At the end of May, Tanabe launched a petition to make Loving Day, celebrated annually on June 12 in honor of the decision date of Loving v. Virginia, a federal observance. The petition requires Tanabe to get 100,000 signatures by June 30 to receive a response from the White House. The designation of Loving Day as a federal observance can come from either Congress or from the president. READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE HERE!