Poverty in America: Remember EVERYTHING MLK Stood For

dajoki

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Sun Jan-18-09 05:05 PM
Original message

Poverty in America: Remember EVERYTHING MLK Stood For

Edited on Sun Jan-18-09 05:19 PM by dajoki

What do you think of when you hear the name Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.? You probably remember the "civil rights movement", or the peaceful way in which he led such a large revolution, or the march on Washington D.C., where at the Lincoln Memorial Dr. King gave one of the greatest, and most famous speeches in American History. He started by saying saying he was there to "cash a check" for "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" but warned fellow protesters not to "allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force." And he finished this most inspiritational speech so elegantly with: "And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, 'Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.'"

This year Martin Luther King Day means something even more important and more special, for the first time in our history, Tuesday, January 20, 2009 we will inaugurate an African-American as President of the United States!! We have certainly come a long way since that August day back in 1963 when Dr. King proclaimed "I have a dream," but not far enough. I think we can all agree that even with the election of Barack Obama to the Presidency, racism and poverty still have deep roots in our nation. Yes, that's right, poverty, the other "great cause" of Martin Luther King Jr., if you don't remember that, don't worry, because it is something we are rarely, if ever, reminded of. Every year in mid-January, around the time of Martin Luther King's birthday, we get obligatory media reports about "the slain civil rights leader." What is truly amazing is that you see or hear nothing about the last few years of his life, its as if they didn't exist. What we do see is the same footage of Dr. King in Birmingham in 1963; the march in D.C., about which I spoke above, also 1963; Selma, Alabama in 1965; and finally, that motel balcony in Memphis, 1968. Why is there such a gap in those final years? Most of those speeches were filmed and yet we do not see them!!

With the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts and the winning of the Nobel Peace Prize all behind him, he was determined to conquer his other great cause, poverty. Seeing that a majority of Americans living in poverty were white, King developed a class perspective. He called for "radical changes in the structure of our society" to redistribute wealth and power. "True compassion," King said, "is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring." Despite many of his closest friends and advisors warning him against it, with the media no longer his ally and the FBI's increased harrassment, he proceeded to criss-cross the country to assemble "a multiracial army of the poor" that he called, the "Poor People's Campaign." He spent what would be his last months planning a new march on Washington, this time for "human rights" and "economic rights," "a poor people's bill of rights." King's economic bill of rights called for massive government jobs programs to rebuild America's cities. He felt the need to confront Congress, which had shown its "hostility to the poor," appropriating "military funds with alacrity and generosity," but providing "poverty funds with miserliness."

More than 40 years after that night in Memphis, doesn't that sound familiar today? The Media, Congress, The White House, all conspiritors in allowing the blight of poverty and homelessness, to not only remain the shame of this nation, but to, I dare say "delight" in it. With the onset of the "Civil Rights Movement" and the "War on Poverty" 45 years ago, I ask, are we any better off today on either front? Yes, we have elected a black man as President, and that may give one reason to hope. But a walk through any inner city, a drive through Appalachia or a trip across rural America with its many small towns and rolling farmlands, a conversation with any of the people you happen to come upon, will show one exactly what is wrong in this country and how difficult a job is awaiting our new President and Congress. Will they have the compassion and fortitude to take on this overwhelming project? And more importantly, will WE have the will to press for change in poverty, because when it comes right down to it, it's not about Obama, or Congress, or the Media, it's about US. WE'VE accepted poverty and homelessness for so long... are WE going to DEMAND that it change? For the sake of the survival of this nation, we ALL better prepare for the struggle ahead, and NO excuse can be accepted!! As Dr. King said, "There is nothing new about poverty. What is new is that we now have the techniques and the resources to get rid of poverty. The real question is whether we have the will."

Posted with permission of peoplesing.org