On this Monday's national holiday, which celebrates what would have been Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 83rd birthday, focusing some of our attention on his unfinished Poor People's Campaign seems particularly appropriate in light of the current socio-political climate, which exemplifies economic inequality. The fact that King is so often viewed only in the light of his Civil Rights movement work on racial equality casts a public image of him that unfortunately neglects the work he was doing in the years near the end of his life. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a man who genuinely interested in peace and equality, and not only in the area of race.
In June 2008, about forty years after King's death in April 1968, NPR ran a story titled "Poor People's Campaign: A Dream Unfufilled." in whose web content appears the following passage:
Campaign organizers intended the campaign to be a peaceful gathering of poor people from communities across the nation. They would march through the capital and visit various federal agencies in hopes of getting Congress to pass substantial anti-poverty legislation. They planned to stay until some action was taken.
While it was three-and-a-half years ago that that NPR story appeared, I can't help but notice now that the tone of King's idea is similar to the recent Occupy movement, the primary difference being the Occupy movement's lack of focus and stated aims. That refrain of "I Am A Man" from the Poor People's Campaign echoes the Occupy movement's "We Are The 99%" in some ways, mainly by asking those in power, "How can you treat us like we don't matter?" and further, "How can a government 'by the people' and 'for the people' continue to allow it, and even sometimes support it?"
According to David J. Garrow's Pulitzer Prize-winning opus, Bearing the Cross, King's vision for the Poor People's Campaign was often misunderstood -- again, like the Occupy movement -- even by the SCLC staff who were charged with implementing it. Garrow devotes a chapter near the end of the book to the last half-year of King's life, which is titled "The Poor People's Campaign and Memphis, 1967 - 1968." In that chapter he describes how people such as James Bevel, Jesse Jackson and Bayard Rustin disagreed with what they perceived to be King's ideas for the project. However, King seemed to believe it was simpler than they were making it; Garrow quotes him as saying: "You can get persons to respond to anything if they are stimulated, and what is more basic an issue than jobs and income? We have something simple enough to rally most people around" (590). Again, eerily similar to what we are seeing today with Occupy, except for this, another quote by King: "We must put down in very clear terms what we want, and our demands must be widely circulated. We must go in not expecting to get everything but there must be some minimal things we will not negotiate" (590).
Martin Luther King, Jr.'s name may be synonymous with racial justice movements, but after significant victories on that front -- the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott, the 1963 March on Washington that culminated in his "I Have A Dream" speech, the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery Voting Rights March -- his less-popular latter-day focus turned to anti-Vietnam War and pro-economic justice efforts. These less tangible issues put him in murkier waters and also spread his resources much thinner as he became a national figure, rather than just a Southern regional leader.
On this celebration of King's life and achievements, which falls on the Monday after his actual birthday, many people will focus their attention on the new monument in Washington DC or on his leadership in the movement for racial equality. People will make speeches about his greatness and others will hold parades, both of which will likely contain the standard keywords and often-repeated phrases, mostly revolving around the issue of race. However, while I can agree that those aspects of the man are important and worthy of reflection, and while I appreciate and agree with the aims of the tributes, during these troubled times the work that he sought to do next, the work he was deeply immersed in when he was killed in Memphis in April 1968 -- the Poor People's Campaign -- seems particularly important to reflect on, as well. How many currently unemployed, disaffected or neglected Americans are right now thinking, I Am A Man . . . and I want a chance to prove it.
Another brief yet solid explanation of the Poor People's Campaign resides on the website for Stanford University's Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute. In their short expository piece, King is quoted as saying, "it's as pure as a man needing income to support his family."
Again, it sounds quite familiar to what many people face today, with the wealthiest people raking in more money than ever and still wanting lower taxes while unemployment rates hovers around 9% and 10%, meaning that one in ten or eleven adults can't find work. On December 15, ten days before Christmas, NBC Nightly News reported that about half of Americans -- 146.4 million people -- now qualify as "poor" under the US government's definitions. How did the "richest nation in the world" end up with HALF of its citizens being "poor" -- or if you prefer the politically correct term, "low-income"?
An organization claiming to have "Resurrected" the Poor People's Campaign operates out of Chicago, Illinois. Their website (which needs a little help to revise some odd spelling, syntax and page layout problems) features an image with the faces of Barack Obama and Martin Luther King, Jr. juxtaposed together, both pensive expressions, seemingly staring down the same foe. I don't much know about them, but their sprawling list of programs would make them an impressive organization if all those things are going on.
My point is: take some time on the MLK holiday to go beyond the tired old responses to this day, including self-satisfied reflection about how enlightened we are in America for electing a black president, and to think about the realities of poverty in America, which is everyone's problem to solve. Economic equality is not an us-versus-them issue; it is not, as the modern-mythic rhetoric portrays, a matter of taking money from hard-working people and giving handouts to lazy people who don't work. Some good, hard-working people have been convinced that people who are poor don't work to earn any money, but that isn't necessarily true. Many people who want to work can't find jobs. There are also millions of poor people in America who work their fingers to the bone, often working seven days a week, often working two jobs or more, often working harder than people who have plenty.
In June 2008, about forty years after King's death in April 1968, NPR ran a story titled "Poor People's Campaign: A Dream Unfufilled." in whose web content appears the following passage:
Campaign organizers intended the campaign to be a peaceful gathering of poor people from communities across the nation. They would march through the capital and visit various federal agencies in hopes of getting Congress to pass substantial anti-poverty legislation. They planned to stay until some action was taken.
While it was three-and-a-half years ago that that NPR story appeared, I can't help but notice now that the tone of King's idea is similar to the recent Occupy movement, the primary difference being the Occupy movement's lack of focus and stated aims. That refrain of "I Am A Man" from the Poor People's Campaign echoes the Occupy movement's "We Are The 99%" in some ways, mainly by asking those in power, "How can you treat us like we don't matter?" and further, "How can a government 'by the people' and 'for the people' continue to allow it, and even sometimes support it?"
According to David J. Garrow's Pulitzer Prize-winning opus, Bearing the Cross, King's vision for the Poor People's Campaign was often misunderstood -- again, like the Occupy movement -- even by the SCLC staff who were charged with implementing it. Garrow devotes a chapter near the end of the book to the last half-year of King's life, which is titled "The Poor People's Campaign and Memphis, 1967 - 1968." In that chapter he describes how people such as James Bevel, Jesse Jackson and Bayard Rustin disagreed with what they perceived to be King's ideas for the project. However, King seemed to believe it was simpler than they were making it; Garrow quotes him as saying: "You can get persons to respond to anything if they are stimulated, and what is more basic an issue than jobs and income? We have something simple enough to rally most people around" (590). Again, eerily similar to what we are seeing today with Occupy, except for this, another quote by King: "We must put down in very clear terms what we want, and our demands must be widely circulated. We must go in not expecting to get everything but there must be some minimal things we will not negotiate" (590).
Martin Luther King, Jr.'s name may be synonymous with racial justice movements, but after significant victories on that front -- the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott, the 1963 March on Washington that culminated in his "I Have A Dream" speech, the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery Voting Rights March -- his less-popular latter-day focus turned to anti-Vietnam War and pro-economic justice efforts. These less tangible issues put him in murkier waters and also spread his resources much thinner as he became a national figure, rather than just a Southern regional leader.
On this celebration of King's life and achievements, which falls on the Monday after his actual birthday, many people will focus their attention on the new monument in Washington DC or on his leadership in the movement for racial equality. People will make speeches about his greatness and others will hold parades, both of which will likely contain the standard keywords and often-repeated phrases, mostly revolving around the issue of race. However, while I can agree that those aspects of the man are important and worthy of reflection, and while I appreciate and agree with the aims of the tributes, during these troubled times the work that he sought to do next, the work he was deeply immersed in when he was killed in Memphis in April 1968 -- the Poor People's Campaign -- seems particularly important to reflect on, as well. How many currently unemployed, disaffected or neglected Americans are right now thinking, I Am A Man . . . and I want a chance to prove it.
Another brief yet solid explanation of the Poor People's Campaign resides on the website for Stanford University's Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute. In their short expository piece, King is quoted as saying, "it's as pure as a man needing income to support his family."
Again, it sounds quite familiar to what many people face today, with the wealthiest people raking in more money than ever and still wanting lower taxes while unemployment rates hovers around 9% and 10%, meaning that one in ten or eleven adults can't find work. On December 15, ten days before Christmas, NBC Nightly News reported that about half of Americans -- 146.4 million people -- now qualify as "poor" under the US government's definitions. How did the "richest nation in the world" end up with HALF of its citizens being "poor" -- or if you prefer the politically correct term, "low-income"?
My point is: take some time on the MLK holiday to go beyond the tired old responses to this day, including self-satisfied reflection about how enlightened we are in America for electing a black president, and to think about the realities of poverty in America, which is everyone's problem to solve. Economic equality is not an us-versus-them issue; it is not, as the modern-mythic rhetoric portrays, a matter of taking money from hard-working people and giving handouts to lazy people who don't work. Some good, hard-working people have been convinced that people who are poor don't work to earn any money, but that isn't necessarily true. Many people who want to work can't find jobs. There are also millions of poor people in America who work their fingers to the bone, often working seven days a week, often working two jobs or more, often working harder than people who have plenty.
Though King's life offers many excellent examples of selfless engagement with the pursuit of social justice, which earned him a Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, his death occurred during his work with the Poor People's campaign. He was in Memphis to support a sanitations workers' strike. On Monday, think about those sanitations workers in 1968 holding signs that read, "I AM A MAN," and on Tuesday, watch the hard work being done by the sanitations workers who go down your street--- and then ask yourself if you respect them for how hard they work, ask yourself what our cities would look like if they actually were lazy good-for-nothings, and ask yourself what their salaries probably are.
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