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----Forwarded Message----
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Sent: Sat Apr 3rd, 2010 11:08 AM EDT
Subject: King's Economic Dream Still Unfulfilled
Martin Luther King Jr.'s Economic Dream Still
Unfulfilled, 42 Years Later
As we mark the anniversary of his murder, too
much of the injustice he fought against is
still with us
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
Salon
April 2, 2010
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/feature/2010/04/02/martin_luther_king_assassination_anniversary_ext2010/index.html?source=newsletter
Forty-two years ago, on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther
King Jr., was assassinated, gunned down in Memphis,
Tenn. To those of us who were alive then, the images
are etched in painful memory: One day, King is standing
with colleagues, including Ralph Abernathy and Jesse
Jackson, on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel; the
next, he's lying there mortally wounded, his aides
pointing in the direction of the rifle shot.
Then we remember the crowds of mourners slowly moving
through the streets of Atlanta on a hot sunny day,
surrounding King's casket as it was carried on a mule-
drawn farm wagon; and the riots that burned across the
nation in the wake of his death; a stinging,
misbegotten rebuke to his gospel of nonviolence.
We sanctify his memory now, name streets and schools
after him, made his birthday a national holiday. But in
April 1968, as King walked out on that motel balcony,
his reputation was under assault. The glory days of the
Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott and the 1963 March on
Washington were behind him, his Nobel Peace Prize
already in the past.
A year before, at Riverside Church in New York, he had
spoken out -- eloquently -- against the war in Vietnam.
King said, "A nation that continues year after year to
spend more money on military defense than on programs
of social uplift is approaching spiritual death," a
position that angered President Lyndon Johnson, many of
King's fellow civil rights leaders and influential
newspapers. The Washington Post charged that King had,
"diminished his usefulness to his cause, to his
country, and to his people."
With his popularity in decline, an exhausted, stressed
and depressed Martin Luther King Jr. turned his
attention to economic injustice. He reminded the
country that his March on Washington five years earlier
had not been for civil rights alone but "a campaign for
jobs and income, because we felt that the economic
question was the most crucial that black people and
poor people, generally, were confronting." Now, King
was building what he called the Poor People's Campaign
to confront nationwide inequalities in jobs, pay and
housing.
But he had to prove that he could still be an effective
leader, and so he came to Memphis, in support of a
strike by that city's African-American garbage men.
Eleven hundred sanitation workers had walked off the
job after two had died in a tragic accident, crushed by
a garbage truck's compactor. The garbage men were fed
up -- treated with contempt as they performed a filthy
and unrewarding job, paid so badly that 40 percent of
them were on welfare, called "boy" by white
supervisors. Their picket signs were simple and
eloquent: "I AM A MAN."
A few weeks into their strike, which had been met with
opposition and violence, King arrived for meetings and
addressed a rally. Ten days later, he returned to lead
a march through the streets of Memphis that ended in
smashed windows, gunshots and tear gas.
Upset by the violence, he came back to the city one
more time to try to put things right. The night before
his death, King made his famous "Mountaintop" speech,
prophetically telling an audience, "Longevity has its
place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just
want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to
the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the
Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want
you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to
the Promised Land!"
The next night he was dead. Twelve days later, the
strike was settled, the garbagemen's union was
recognized and the city of Memphis begrudgingly agreed
to increase their pay, at first by a dime an hour, and
later, an extra nickel.
That paltry sum would also be prophetic. All these
decades later, little has changed when it comes to
economic equality. If anything, the recent economic
meltdown and recession have made the injustice of
poverty even more profound, especially in a society
where the top percentile enjoys undreamed of
prosperity.
Unemployment among African-Americans is nearly double
that of whites, according to the National Urban
League's latest State of Black America report. Black
men and women in this country make 62 cents on the
dollar earned by whites. Less than half of black and
Hispanic families own homes and they are three times
more likely to live below the poverty line.
The nonpartisan group United for a Fair Economy has
issued a report that features Martin Luther King Jr. on
the cover with the title "State of the Dream 2010:
Drained." King's dream is in jeopardy, the report's
authors write, "The Great Recession has pulled the plug
on communities of color, draining jobs and homes at
alarming rates while exacerbating persistent
inequalities of wealth and income."
Nor will a recovery ameliorate the crisis. "A rising
tide does not lift all boats," United for a Fair
Economy's report goes on to say, "because the public
policies, economic structures, and unwritten rules of
racism form mountains and ridgelines, and hills and
valleys that shape our economic landscape. As a result,
a rising economic tide fills the rivers and reservoirs
of some, while leaving others dry and parched."
This is a perilous moment. The individualist, greed-
driven free-market ideology that both our major parties
have pursued is at odds with what most Americans really
care about. Popular support for either party has struck
bottom, as more and more agree that growing inequality
is bad for the country, that corporations have too much
power, that money in politics has corrupted out system,
and that working families and poor communities need and
deserve help because the free market has failed to
generate shared prosperity - its famous unseen hand has
become a closed fist..
It is hard to overstate the consequences of choosing
more of the same -- the very policies that have
sundered our social contract. But hear the judgment of
Nobel laureate Kenneth Arrow, echoing Martin Luther
King Jr.'s life and martyrdom. "The vast inequalities
of income weaken a society's sense of mutual concern,"
Arrow said. "... The sense that we are all members of
the social order is vital to the meaning of
civilization."
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