Rainbow PUSH holds 'Day of Service and Learning' event ahead of MLK Day

CHICAGO (WLS) -- Martin Luther King Jr. Day is Monday, but that isn't stopping some in the Chicago area from celebrating this weekend.

Rainbow PUSH held its "Day of Service and Learning" event Saturday.

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Inside the sprawling South Side Rainbow PUSH Coalition Headquarters, there was a message of hope, faith and unity.

"Hope is not a feeling or a mood or what's happening when you wake up in the morning," said Reverend Jim Wallis, Archbishop Desmond Tutu Chair in Faith and Justice at Georgetown University.

Saturday marked the civil rights organization's "Day of Service and Learning" in commemoration of the upcoming holiday.

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Rev. Wallis spoke about faith and politics in America.

"Hope he taught me is a decision, a choice you make because of this thing we call faith," Rev. Wallis said.

His speech came just days before President-elect Donald Trump takes office and a new political era begins, creating a sense of uncertainty for some.

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"They want to make us afraid," Rev. Wallis said. "They want to make us feel hopeless and helpless, but our trajectory is faith."

Different faith leaders also took the stage to address different topics around religion, including the role of justice in faith.

"Joy is defiance to be able to laugh, to be able to come together in community for us to find safe spaces to be black or be brown or be gay, be straight," one panelist said.

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"I am not serving a purple congregation. People that come to my church know what we stand for and be ready to buckle in on Sunday," another panelist said.

Congressman Jonathan Jackson, son of Reverend Jesse Jackson, the founder and president of Rainbow PUSH Coalition, ended the program with some wise words.

"The world wants to simply call him Dr. Martin Luther King. But you become a doctor when you write a thesis and have a paper and that's your idea," Rep. Jackson said. "You become a reverend when you have a calling from God."