There is nothing new about poverty. What is new, however, is that we now have the resources to get rid of it. Not too many years ago, Dr. Kirtley Mather, a Harvard geologist, wrote a book entitled Enough and to Spare. He set forth the basic theme that famine is wholly unnecessary in the modern world. Today, therefore, the question on the agenda must read: Why should there be hunger and privation in any land, in any city, at any table, when man has the resources and the scientific know-how to provide all mankind with the basic necessities of life?
Forty-five years ago this month, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. took a very rare sabbatical at an isolated house in Jamaica far away from telephones and the constant pressures of his life as a very public civil rights leader to write what would become his last book: Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? The excerpt above feels as though it could have been written yesterday. Professor Mather’s book arguing that mankind had achieved the ability to move beyond famine was published in 1944, but in 2012, despite nearly seventy more years of unparalleled advances both in scientific and technological capability and in global resources and wealth, hunger and want are still rampant. Back then Dr. King wrote:
There is no deficit in human resources; the deficit is in human will… The well-off and the secure have too often become indifferent and oblivious to the poverty and deprivation in their midst. The poor in our countries have been shut out of our minds, and driven from the mainstream of our societies, because we have allowed them to become invisible. Ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation. No individual or nation can be great if it does not have a concern for ‘the least of these.'
When Dr. King died in 1968 calling for a Poor People’s Campaign, there were 25.4 million poor Americans, including 11 million poor children. Today there are more than 46 million Americans living in poverty, including 16.4 million poor children. The question of why we still allow poverty and hunger to exist—and the answer—remain the same: The deficit in human will.
As another political season gets into full swing in the United States, a new crop of candidates are making a lot of promises about their competing visions of America. But how many TV debates are focusing on whether America is a compassionate nation? How many stump speeches are saying how shameful it is that last year more Americans relied on food stamps to eat than at any time since the program began in 1939? How many are responding to Occupy Wall Street’s outcry about the morally obscene gulf between rich and poor in our nation where the 400 highest income earners made as much as the combined tax revenues of 22 states in 2008? Which PACs are running commercials to remind Americans that we are normalizing poverty, child hunger, and homelessness, and creating historic income, wealth, and mobility gaps that threaten to destroy the American dream? If the qualification for individual and national greatness is genuine concern for the ‘least of these,’ too many of our political leaders and citizens are failing.
As our nation pauses for the national holiday celebrating Dr. King’s birthday, I hope we will not spend it just listening to speeches praising Dr. King but instead will heed and act on his words.
When will we hear what Dr. King declared in 1967—“the time has come for an all-out world war against poverty”—and work to win the first victory right here at home in the richest nation on earth? Is it possible to overcome our deficit in human will, or is the fact that we have already squandered so much time and still have so far to go a reason to give up?
Dr. King’s voice guides us if we are willing to take the next step and use it as a road map for action. In Where Do We Go from Here?, as he reflected on what direction the struggle for civil rights and social justice should take next, he shared a story about the need to commit to difficult struggles for the long haul. Dr. King described a flight he had taken from New York to London years earlier in an older propeller airplane. The trip took nine and a half hours, but on the way home, the crew announced the flight from London back to New York would take twelve and a half. When the pilot came out to visit the cabin, Dr. King asked him why. “‘You must understand about the winds,’ he said. ‘When we leave New York, a strong tail wind is in our favor, but when we return, a strong head wind is against us.’ Then he added, ‘Don’t worry. These four engines are capable of battling the winds.’”
Dr. King concluded: “In any social revolution there are times when the tail winds of triumph and fulfillment favor us, and other times when strong head winds of disappointment and setbacks beat against us relentlessly. We must not permit adverse winds to overwhelm us as we journey across life’s mighty Atlantic; we must be sustained by our engines of courage in spite of the winds. This refusal to be stopped, this ‘courage to be,’ this determination to go on ‘in spite of’ is the hallmark of any great movement.”
Today we need to rev up our engines of courage, battle against the fierce head winds of economic downturn, unemployment, poverty, and greed that threaten to undo the progress of the last fifty years, and stay true to the course Dr. King set for us. Now is the time to end child poverty and hunger in America.
Follow Marian Wright Edelman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ChildDefender
Rabbi Joshua Levine Grater: Loving the Occupiers and the Bankers in Our Midst
Romney eats the prosperity gospel every morning with his sugary cereal.
I wouldn't ask for a war on poverty. The way our country wages war.....we may have some declaring that we need to lock up the poor, or throw them out of the country, or heck.....just firebomb entire poor neighborhoods.
While I respect the intent of MLK's words, our country has a real problem when it declares war....on anything.
First, we stop the federal government from spending $1.5 Trillion more than its current revenue.
Second, we ELIMINATE the entire social democratic state and the unending rent seeking extortion that invariably arises from it.
Third, we restore the freedom that social democracy has destroyed by forming a new social contract and Constitution based solely upon freedom and rejection of collectivism in ANY form.
Fourth, we create a government as employer of last resort program so that no American need ever go without a productive job again.
Fifth, we pay off our debts … and, yes, after steps 1 – 4 have been accomplished, we can, at long last, do so by raising taxes on the rich and restoring true progressivity in tax rates.
http://www.webofdebt.com/
http://audio.wrko.com/a/50687769/economist-warren-mosler-on-the-economy-part-1.htm
Alternatively,Remit it through food stamps and travel vouchers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax
The civil war? I believe that the festering issue of slavery prevented this from happening here. The "financial help for women of soldiers" instituted by the CSA (!) was almost immediately stopped by the USA after the end of the war. Moreover, the greatest war-effects in Europe were caused by WW1 and WW2, both long after our civil war.
Our greatest defenses are the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
Is this a necessary bridge of support to bring a nation and its people to prosperity? No, it is a perpetual ineffective and unsustainable subsidy. Current programs perpetuate poverty, no solve it.
So, until demonstrable changes are made in the way we hold our government accountable, the idea of simply pouring more money into a broken machine makes no sense
It seems she would rather just give a man a fish
Standing up for the poor and disenfranchised is always the right thing to do but if the Bible is taken seriously for the time being we should expect the forces of injustice and inequality to gain momentum. I realize that this could be taken as a pessimistic and disheartening vision of the future but a world going from one disaster to the next, from bad to worse is something that will have to be dealt with and holding out a false hope is not going to change that.
Unfortunately the world has for the most part rejected the wisdom offered by God and has instead decided to rely on the misshapen wisdom of human beings who think they know better than God how to structure a civilization. There is a lesson to be learned from the bad choices that we keep making. When we follow human leadership we will always end up with corruption, injustice and war because that is the way of the world sad to say.
The Christianity that I aspire to and admire has little in common with the modern version as it exists today in the mainline churches. The worldly version as co-opted by Rome is merely a veneer without depth or substance and should not be thought of as the Christianity taught by Jesus that is in many ways the exact opposite.
As I understand it true Christians do not worship money, vanity and greed and they attempt to please God by following His desire that His children be kind, merciful, just and humble. It is said that those are the fruits of the spirit so if a person is a good example of those qualities they are followers of Christ.
For my part I don’t see how a sincere Christian could possibly be associated with the republican party it just doesn’t make any sense to me.
Your comments about social mobility are complete nonsense; you just pulled out your....!
If you look at the statistic known as the Gini coefficienÂÂÂÂt, which is used to measure income inequalityÂÂÂÂ, the numbers are startling with regard to the United States and where it fits in the world with regard to income inequalityÂÂÂÂ.
The lower the number the less the inequalityÂÂÂ, and converselyÂÂÂ...
Sweden 23
Norway 25
Austria 26
Luxembourg 26
Finland 26.8
Germany 27
Belgium 28
Iceland 28
Denmark 29
Ireland 29.3
Australia 30.5
NetherlandÂÂÂÂs 30.9
Italy 32
Spain 32
Canada 32.1
France 32.7
SwitzerlanÂÂÂÂd 33.7
United Kingdom 34
United States 45
(CIA Factbook)
In general the U.S. shares its 40's status with countries such as Argentina, Russia, Cambodia, Cameroon, China, Dominican RepublicanÂÂÂÂ, Ecuador, Iran, Jamaica, Macedonia, Malaysia, Morocco, Nepal, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Peru, PhilippineÂÂÂÂs, Uganda, TurkmenistÂÂÂÂan. Senegalâ€
Now, since the U.S. is a wealthy country, there is obviously more wealth at the bottom and the middle than in the aforementiÂÂÂÂoned lesser developed and Third World countries. However, it's quite telling that the U.S in terms of inequality lines up with the Third World and lesser developed world, and not the First and developed world.â€
End "Globalization" agreements...put restrictions on outsourcing jobs overseas, increase taxes on the wealthy and Corporations. Restore tariffs on imported goods, especially from China and India. To hell with all the arguments about how "The Job Creators" will send the jobs overseas - THEY ALREADY DID. The downward spiral in the standard of living for most Americans will viciously accelerate, unless drastic actions are taken very soon. The damage done already has been enormous, amounting to an entire Lost Generation, who will spend all their useful worklives simply struggling to survive; unable to accomplish anything, even WITH a college degree. May this Spring and Summer see a resurgent "Occupy" movement of MILLIONS - enough to overwhelm attempts to pepper-spray and arrest them. If the Tree of liberty and opportunity will no longer bear fruit for the bulk of the American people, then chop it down, and plant a new one.