The Athens Human Rights Festival is turning 30 and inviting the entire community to celebrate. The festival returns this weekend to downtown to educate Athenians about human rights violations locally and in the rest of the world.

The festival started as a memorial to those killed and wounded during protests at Kent State University in Ohio and Jackson State College in Mississippi in 1970.

“The purpose of the festival is to make people take notice of human rights violations and to motivate them to do something about it,” festival volunteer Katie Andrews said. “Everyone is entitled by their mere existence to certain inalienable rights, and I think people may forget that not everyone in the world is allowed to enjoy the rights that some of us take for granted.”

This year’s festival was planned to underline the event’s original roots and has a lineup of speakers who were major players in the civil rights movements of the 1960s.

“The speakers were chosen to open people’s minds about human rights violations,” Laurie McGowan, a freshman and festival volunteer from Columbus said. “The lineup is really amazing this year, and I think people will be inspired by what the speakers have to say and what they have been through.”

The honored guest and speaker this year is Gene Young, a longtime civil rights leader who was present when Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech and was an eyewitness to the campus killings at Jackson State in 1970. Young will speak at 7:15 p.m. Saturday and 2:30 p.m. Sunday.

Other speakers scheduled for the festival include Eugene Wilkes Jr. from the University’s School of Law, members of Living Wage Athens and volunteers from Common Ground. There also will be 19 bands performing throughout the two-day festival.

Although the organizers have made a point to make the festival both interesting and entertaining, the main focus is to bring activism to the Athens community and around the world.

“The festival is meant to educate people about human rights violations all over the world,” volunteer Neil Bonney said. “There will be ways to get involved and get active about human rights violations even while you are still having fun at the festival.”

Bonney said human rights are violated every day, and just because people do not hear about them in the news or on television does not mean they do not happen. He said people need to educate themselves about what is going on in the world around them and take a stand against things they do not agree with.

“This festival is not going to be about walking around and just saying, ‘yes those things are wrong’ and then going back home and watching television,” he said. “It is about standing up for the rights of everyone.”