GREATER LIBERTY: Annual Human Family Reunion celebrates hate busters

By: Ed Chasteen, Community Columnist

September 18, 2002

Part 1

From around the world and across the country good people come to Greater Kansas City to make it their home. Drawn to the Heart of America by our hospitality, they come with their courage and their wonderful ways.

Together each day we then move toward a full-fledged demonstration of all that is envisioned in those noble documents that gave birth to us as a nation. When the world sees that we turn to each other and draw together as one, drawing strength and inspiration from our many languages and faiths and colors and foods and styles of dress and points of view, then the world will know beyond doubt that we are indivisible and invincible.

To our Human Family Reunion Greater Kansas City has come tonight. Red and yellow, black, brown and white, Christian, Buddhist and Jew, Hindu, Baha'i and Muslim too - an all-American sight. We have all brought our favorite foods. We are wearing something comfortable. We have come to visit with our neighbors. We have come also to honor some of those people and places that work every day of the year to bring us together and make us strong.

HateBusters this night bestows the DQ Award upon these noble organizations. When Don Quixote's friends tell him that wickedness wears thick armor, he replies, "And for that you would have me surrender? Nay, the enchanter may confuse the outcome 10,000 times. Still must a man arise and again do battle, for the effort is sublime."

Our HateBusters DQ honorees this year are, in alphabetical order, Catholic Char-ities, Christ Church Unity, Center for Islamic Education in North America, CRES, Don Bosco Center, Heart of Amer-ica Indian Center, Internat-ional Relations Council and Jewish Community Relations Bureau.

(More on this next week.)