[Faith & Hunger] Will Governor Spitzer Embrace the Message of Dr. King?

[Dunleamark at aol.com]

Will Governor Spitzer  Embrace the Message of Dr. King? 
by Mark Dunlea, Hunger  Action Network of NYS 
I find it ironic that  New York’s Governors release the state budget 
proposals the day after we observe  Martin Luther King Jr. Day. 
On Monday, elected  officials across the state and country will speak to the 
moral leadership  provided by Dr. King. Most will focus on Dr. King’s role as 
a civil rights  leader. Most however will fail to acknowledge how Dr. King’s 
message changed in  the crucible of the struggle for equality. As his vision 
changed, Dr. King  became more controversial to the white political leadership. 
King became an  outspoken critic on the war in Vietnam. And shortly before his 
assassination, he  embraced the fight on poverty. When he was killed in 
Memphis supporting the  striking garbage workers, he was organizing a massive march 
in DC to launch a  new campaign to end poverty. 
On Tuesday, Governor  Spitzer will unveil his budget proposals. The state 
budget is the primary policy  document for lawmakers, determining how New York 
invests it resources to meet  our needs. Unfortunately, previous budgets have 
fallen far short of embracing  the dream of Dr. King. 
One would hope that  Governor Spitzer and other state officials might take an 
hour or two on Monday  to read some of the teachings of Dr. King. 
If he was alive today,  Dr. King would speak out against the failure to once 
again raise welfare  benefits after 18 years of inaction. While he might be 
heartened by some of the  efforts to improve health care, he would be concerned 
that the Governor still  believes it will be a long road to universal health 
care. “Of all the forms of  inequality, injustice in health care is the most 
shocking and inhumane,” Dr.  King wrote. And he would be very upset that our 
state spends more money to  incarcerate its citizens, overwhelmingly people of 
color, than we do to provide  a college education to our youth. 
Shortly before he was  murdered, Dr. King had come to the conclusion that a 
guaranteed annual income  was needed as the prime step to end poverty in our 
country. Surprisingly, this  was actually proposed a number of years later by 
President Nixon as a  replacement for welfare, but it was rejected by Congress. 
Instead, welfare  benefits in New York now come to less than half of the 
federal poverty level.  Almost a third of the residents of upstate cities such as 
Buffalo, Rochester,  Syracuse and Albany live in poverty.  Four decades after 
King’s murder, poverty  still disproportionately impacts people of color. 
The US leads the  industrial world in the gap between the rich and the poor – 
and New York leads  the US in such a gap, as well as the gap between the 
middle class and the  rich. 
Sadly, the war on  welfare and the poor dramatically escalated in 1991 
following the electoral  success in the Louisiana gubernatorial primary of David 
Dukes, the former KKK  leader. Dukes used welfare as a code word for race, even 
those most welfare  participants nationally are white. Dukes’ impact 
unfortunately is enduring. Even  New York Governor Mario Cuomo notably shifted to the 
right, dividing the poor  into the deserving and undeserving. President Clinton 
in 1992 campaigned on the  promise to end welfare as we know, and along with 
House Speaker Newt Gingrich,  ended the entitlement status of the Aid to 
Dependent Children that was part of  FDR’s New Deal. 
Its replacement, TANF  (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families), “promoted 
work” but failed to create  jobs and has lagged in providing child care, job 
training and education. New  York has done particularly poorly, ranking almost at 
the bottom (47th) in the  overall effectiveness of its welfare to work 
programs. As King noted, “New forms  of work that enhance the social good will have 
to be devised for those for whom  traditional jobs are not available.” 
The poor are virtually  never discussed by our political leaders anymore. 
Even in the Democratic Party  they have been eliminated as a core constituency. 
Poverty was not once mentioned  in Governor Spitzer’s recent State of the State 
Message. When the Governor does  mention poverty, it is invariably limited to 
the working poor. The poorest of  the poor are invisible. Yet as Dr. King 
noted, “no matter how dynamically the  economy develops and expands, it does not 
eliminate all  poverty.” 
Here is what Dr. King  wrote about poverty in his final book: 
“Up to recently we  have proceeded from a premise that poverty is a 
consequence of multiple evils:  lack of education restricting job opportunities; poor 
housing which stultified  home life and suppressed initiative; fragile family 
relationships which  distorted personality development. The logic of this 
approach suggested that  each of these causes be attacked one by one. Hence a 
housing program to  transform living conditions, improved educational facilities to 
furnish tools  for better job opportunities, and family counseling to create 
better personal  adjustments were designed. In combination these measures were 
intended to remove  the causes of poverty.  
“While none of these  remedies in itself is unsound, all have a fatal 
disadvantage. The programs have  never proceeded on a coordinated basis or at a 
similar rate of development….As a  consequence, fragmentary and spasmodic reforms 
have failed to reach down to the  profoundest needs of the poor. In addition to 
the absence of coordination and  sufficiency, the programs of the past all 
have another common failing -- they  are indirect. Each seeks to solve poverty 
by first solving something else.   
“I am now convinced  that the simplest approach will prove to be the most 
effective -- the solution  to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely 
discussed measure: the  guaranteed income.” 
Our political leaders  like to sanitize Dr. King, glossing over the challenge 
that he presented to the  power structure not only in the name of racial 
equality but in economic justice  and the concept of nonviolence. King stated that 
“The whirlwinds of revolt will  continue to shake the foundations of our 
nation until the bright day of justice  emerges.”  As King implored, “Let us be 
dissatisfied until from every city  hall, justice will roll down like waters 
and righteousness like a mighty stream…  I have a dream that one day this nation 
will rise up and live out the true  meaning of its creed: "We hold these 
truths to be self-evident: that all men are  created equal."




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