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Riverhead native to give keynote at MLK Breakfast

FILE PHOTO | Riverhead native Rashad Robinson spoke in August on the MSNBC show “Disrupt with Karen Finney.” He will be the keynote speaker Monday at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Breakfast.

Rashad Robinson, a Riverhead native who’s become one of the leading voices for civil rights as the executive director of ColorofChange.org, will deliver the keynote address Monday at the 29th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Breakfast.

The event is sponsored by the First Baptist Church of Riverhead and begins at 8 a.m. at the Hyatt Regency Wind Watch Hotel in Hauppauge.

Mr. Robinson, a ’97 Riverhead graduate, joined Color of Change, an online organization with an estimated 900,000 members that advocates on behalf of African-Americans, in 2011.

Mr. Robinson has written for numerous media publications and most recently wrote about net neutrality, which requires Internet providers to provide equal service to customers, as opposed to charging more to customers who may use more data. The current rules were overturned this week after a Verizon lawsuit was brought against the Federal Communications Commission.

Mr. Robinson will also be featured in an upcoming Ebony Magazine article called “Next in 2014.”