As we face 2006

On this day when we celebrate the Civil Rights Movement, we recognize that the struggle was not simply about the right to sit at a lunch counter, ride in the front of a bus, or even to be able to walk into the voter booth and cast a ballot.

The effort to obtain voting rights was not symbolic. It was well understood that people who vote can have power, if they use their votes wisely. The struggle to participate, to have a seat at the table where economic and governmental benefits are apportioned, has not been easy, and is far from over.

Through years of struggle, much positive change resulted from the efforts of people throughout the country. Jim Crow was defeated and then:

Beginning in the 1960's, the nation began to assume some responsibility for alleviating the crushing poverty in which many millions of people live in this land of wealth. Housing programs were expanded. Nutrition programs provided meals for the elderly and school children. Medicare and Medicaid began to address the health needs of the poor, disabled, and elderly. Head start was funded to encourage kids to get something like a start at education. Affirmative action programs resulted in people of color being admitted to institutions of higher education in significant numbers, and in job openings in previously all white, and often all male, positions which offered the chance at true advancement.

Yet at the same time, a coalition was developing of some people of wealth, along with the religious right, and those who could be convinced that they had lost their jobs or status to people of color, due to misguided programs.

Unacknowledged in this propaganda was any discussion of the effects of legislation which increasingly benefited people of wealth at the expense of the poor. Instead, the national budget has been deliberately bled, most effectively since the Bush II administration took office. Program after program has been cut or eliminated, so that poverty in this country has increased in the past several years, while the income and accumulated wealth of the top 5% has grown by enormous proportions.

According to the 2004 Census figures, 24.3% of Black families nationwide live below the poverty line, defined by the Federal Government as just over $17,000 for a family of four. Since 2001, the first year of the current federal administration, poverty has increased for four consecutive years, to 37 million people, some 12.7% of our total population.

The Urban Institute, Tax Policy Center , calculates that the most recent tax cuts, by 2010, will result in a total reduction of $16 in taxes for taxpayers earning less than $30,000. $30,000 is the median income for Black households nationwide. More tax cuts are being aggressively pushed for the wealthy in 2006.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports that Social Security reduces elderly poverty from 50% to about 12%, lifting 12 million elderly people out of poverty. Yet our elected federal government proposed diminishing the protections of the social security system.

It is in neighborhoods throughout the country populated primarily by people of color, where public schools are often still at their worst. African Americans are disproportionately unemployed or underemployed.

The justice system is not working for people of color. Access to legal representation in criminal cases, more than 40 years after Gideon v. Wainwright, is a cruel hoax in many communities and cities throughout the nation, and even in this state. And for the resolution of basic legal issues of family or housing or benefits law, it is often just non-existent.

In April 1967, Martin Luther King gave a speech entitled "Beyond Vietnam." He understood the struggle for civil rights as a struggle for economic equality. In speaking of that war and its effects upon the poor, he said:

"A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor, both black and white, through the poverty program. … Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war. And I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic, destructive suction tube."

We are there again. We must recognize the link between race and poverty. We have to address the unequal apportionment of education, health care, housing and jobs.

When hurricane Katrina struck, the insidious nature of racism once again was exposed. Those with resources could evacuate. Not only could enormous numbers of the poor not do so, but our government officials were unable to grasp the reality. Thousands of people, most of them Black, were left without food or water in an abandoned city. People died unnecessarily, as a result not of the storm, but of governmental indifference.

Now as we watch the reconstruction, we see the disproportionate burden upon the poor, a large proportion of whom are Black. Those hurricane evacuees continue to experience the results of governmental action and inaction. We see the permanent loss of housing, in Mississippi as land is cleared to make way for casinos or high income dwellings, and in Louisiana as arguments rage as to whether to rebuild the poor, low lying neighborhoods of New Orleans . People without proper education and training have been scattered throughout the country, where employment is not available for many. Long term health care does not exist. All of the problems were part of the national shame long before the recent storms. The aftermath of the hurricanes simply brought a sharper focus to the inequities.

The overwhelming disparity of wealth and poverty, and the cavalier disregard for the poor which seems to have become acceptable is a national disgrace.

Dr. King warned that:

"A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia , Africa , and South America , only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." … The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just."

We must take up the responsibility to speak out against the distortion of our national values.

I urge you-- we have to protect our collective future. America , still the richest and most powerful country in the world, has the ability to bring racism and domestic poverty to an end with a drastic reordering of priorities. And if we do so, we will prove to the world that our rhetoric of freedom and democracy is far more than empty words. We can and must lead the way in the revolution of values.

None of us can abdicate our individual responsibility. We are the people.

Copyright © Rita L. Bender, 2006. Used with permission of Rita L. Bender for the Martin Luther King Day observance King County , Washington.