Recalling Dr. King's focus on poverty

As the nation's pauses to celebrate this year's national holiday in memory of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who would be celebrating his 83rd birthday, his leadership of a non-violent movement to end discrimination in voting, housing and employment opportunities will be recalled in speeches, sermons and TV specials.

Given less attention, however, will be Dr. King's focus in the final years of his too short life on the issue of poverty in the United States. Dr. King recognized that true opportunity would not come when so many Americans struggled in lives of scarcity. In a nation blessed with such riches, Dr. King saw no reason why there should continue to be so many poor.

"The curse of poverty has no justification in our age," Dr. King said. "The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty."

Perhaps this point of emphasis gets less recognition because it is so radical a thought. And if the goal is to abolish poverty, how does society go about it? Conservatives may see it as a call for the socialist notion of a redistribution of wealth through the heavy hand of government. Liberals may shy away for fear it will raise the ghost of the War on Poverty, which however well intentioned was no more successful than the War on Drugs and which arguably fostered dependence on the welfare state rather than providing a means to self-reliance.

But Dr. King was not looking for a handout, rather a system that fairly distributed assets so that workers shared the fruits of their labor and wealth and power did not accumulate only with a privileged few.

"True compassion is more than flinging a coin at a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring," Dr. King said.

Economic disparity continues to work against the American ideal of class mobility. The education gap in our public education system, particularly acute in Connecticut, is fundamentally an economic problem. Low-income students in inner city schools score dramatically lower on standardized tests and have much lower graduation and college attendance rates than their better off suburban counterparts.

While the United States has moved beyond institutional discrimination, and now has an African-American as its president, the income and earning gaps between white Americans and minority groups persists. African-American unemployment is roughly double that of white Americans, while Latino jobless rate stands at 11.4 percent, compared to overall unemployment of 8.6.

As the United States looks towards an economic recovery from the Great Recession, it must pursue policies that pull all boats along on the rising tide. Unfortunately, that is not the recent record. The last period of economic growth, ending in 2007, was the first on record that saw poverty rates rise and median incomes fall, despite rising profits and productivity. The subsequent recession then exacerbated the growing chasm between rich and poor.

Dr. King's dreams are not all achieved.

"America owes a debt of justice which it has only begun to pay. If it loses the will to finish or slackens in its determination, history will recall its crimes and the country that would be great will lack the most indispensable element of greatness - justice," Dr. King said.

In the coming election Americans need to hear from the parties and their presidential candidates how their policies will frame a recovery that benefits all citizens and reverses the troubling trend of growing poverty in America and the diminishment of the middle class.