Dr. King's "other" speech. War as an enemy of the poor.

Today is the day set aside for remembrance of a national hero, and in many ways, a source of national inspiration. Dr. King is most remembered for his infamous and magnificent call upon our nation to make good on our national promissory note, known as the Declaration of Independence. 

"In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."

Certainly things are better today in 2011, then they were when the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964, and the Voting Rights Act in 1965, both victories of the Civil Rights movement. However, we cannot hang our hats on the simple accomplishment of integration among our schools, and workplaces. The new civil rights struggle is about economic-civil rights. As John Edwards had brought up during his 2008 primary run, we live in two Americas these days. The one for the rich and wealthy, and the one for the working poor. Notice I say working poor, and not middle class. This may be a slight overstatement, but by in large, that is what we have. We have a class of working poor in America who are living at or below the Federal Poverty Line. In 2009, 1 in 7 people, or 44 million Americans were reported to be living at or below the poverty line, according to the Census Bureau. This is the highest number recorded since the Census first started tracking poverty levels 51 years ago! 


One of the legacies of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that too often flies under the radar, is his passion for economic justice. A fight for economic justice cuts across all lines that we as a society have set up for ourselves. It is a fight for all races, all ages, all religions, all political affiliations. It is the fight that must be waged if we wish to see the many ills of our society begun to be alleviated. People need to understand the disgusting distribution of wealth in this country, and the many inequities it has caused as secondary results. 


September 2010: Report by the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee, Income Inequality and the Great Recession


I was in my Political Scope and Methods class last week, and Dr. Dickinson queried why we thought that we as a country spend more on military than nearly half of the world COMBINED, while still having such high rates of poverty and homelessness. This is a fact not commonly known in the American public, and is often dismissed as it was by some in my class that this is because we HAVE to be the world police. After listening to my classmates, I said that I believed that war was a distraction, to keep our minds off the income inequalities in this country. Like Michael Moore has made the point in his movie Fahrenheit 9/11, our military in large part relies on poor and "middle class" kids to fill the ranks.  We all have friends or family members who have joined the military at some point in their lives, but as of  late (and I don't think this is different from the overall trend) I have heard more and more stories about young twenty somethings signing up for one branch or the other, all based on the promise of a paycheck. This is because we have seen most manufacturing jobs shipped overseas in the last thirty years, and when people can't find jobs, or find themselves in kind of a dead end spot in their lives, a lot of them join up. 


Without taking that issue on completely, let me say what most people already know, we could be spending our money a lot better than being in 170 countries around the world. This was a message that Dr. King covered in what I like to call his "other" speech, called "Time to Break Silence" denouncing the Vietnam war. More importantly, one of the grounds he was denouncing it on, was that military build ups take away money that could be spent on programs for the poor. Instead, we have become an imperial nation in a perpetual state of war.

"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. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched the 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. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such."

Full text and audio of speech

So please, when you remember this man today remember the broad scope of things he stood for, fought for, and ultimately, died for. It is up to us to continue the struggle for economic justice in this country. Believe in the American dream, but don't fall for the American mirage. There are many things in the political system that we must change through a mass grassroots movement that President Obama called for during the 2008 election.

So please tell your friends about this blog, spread the word about the struggle for social justice, and keep tuning in for more information about what I have planned in my fight for a more just America, and a more just world!
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Side note: I will do another posting later today about the anniversary of a national tragedy for both the US and the Hawaiian Kingdom. So stay tuned!!

Mahalo nui loa.
   (thank you very much)