Progress against poverty stalled (+ video)

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.king04apr04,0,4939532.story

By Benjamin Todd Jealous
April 4, 2008

To mark the 40th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., many will reflect on the fires that erupted across America. Gone are the red embers of urban rage, replaced by the smoldering ashes of perpetually bombed-out neighborhoods.

Hard-hit Baltimore provides a window on the legacy of Dr. King's assassination. When the riot was over, six people would be dead, 700 injured and 4,500 arrested. Total property damage was estimated in millions of dollars.

But no one has calculated the cost of the effects of Dr. King's assassination in diminished opportunities to the successive generations of Baltimoreans (of all races) still trapped in poverty.

The "Promised Land" - the destination of the "revolution" that Dr. King talked about in the days before he was slain - was defined in economic terms. "The dispossessed of this nation - the poor, both white and Negro," Dr. King said, "live in a cruelly unjust society. They must organize a revolution against that injustice, not against the lives of the persons who are their fellow citizens, but against the structures through which the society is refusing to take means which have been called for, and which are at hand, to lift the load of poverty."

Dr. King's last transformative vision for our nation was not an idealistic dream. It was an urgent prescription for ending poverty and making the blessings of American citizenship meaningful to all in this country.

The need to fill Dr. King's prescription is as great as ever. Millions of Americans are scourged by an economic downturn fueled by the mortgage crisis and skyrocketing food and gas prices. Joblessness is increasing, and the opportunity-killing burden of racism is matched by the strain of an economy that fails to produce enough good jobs for all workers seeking them, regardless of race.

FULL story at link.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

1. Stalled?

Hell, we are in Full Reverse.

Back in 2001, I predicted on a mailing list that the Bush Administration would be full-bore about upward redistribution of wealth. Since a country's wealth is a finite thing, a lot of people were facing grinding poverty. Oh, the righties there had aneurysms. They said that economies and wealth are not finite and that nothing like that could ever happen and oh yeah, Dear Leader is a man of the people.

Yeah, well, where are we now?