Printer-friendly versionIn early 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders continued plans for a Poor People’s Campaign. It would take place in the spring in Washington, D.C. The poor and those in solidarity with them would take up temporary residence and march peacefully on the Capitol and advocate for substantial anti-poverty legislation from Congress. They would demand jobs, healthcare and decent housing.
People set up a camp on the Washington Mall and called it Resurrection City. Jesse Jackson gave his famous "I Am Somebody" speech there. But King was assassinated in the weeks leading up to the campaign and Robert Kennedy was assassinated during it. Disheartened and discouraged people drifted away from the campaign, their dreams deferred.
What if MLK had lived to lead the campaign with his insight and eloquence? What if Bobby Kennedy had lived to support the campaign with his doggedness and political will? Would the United States be a place where 1 out of 5 children, around 15.5 million, are in poverty and where close to 50 million people are without health insurance?
Something happened at my Title I elementary school that brought those questions to mind. A guest speaker dressed in a hard hat and reflective vest stood before my classroom of second-graders, his white skin and Boston accent contrasted with the black and brown children using southern drawls and Hispanic accents in front of him. He was telling them about his work as a miner in western Canada.
"What were you doing on Christmas Day?" he asked. The students waved their hands in the air, buzzing with answers.
"Well, do you know what I was doing on Christmas Day?" he continued. He pointed to a picture on the SMART Board of a giant truck at the expansive mine. "I was working ... driving that truck all day long."
A soft-spoken little girl named Maria suddenly spoke up and said, "My mom had to work on Christmas Day, too."
The Poor People’s Campaign has largely been forgotten. Yet here was an echo of it right in my small, inner-city classroom. The experiences of a working class white man and a brown child from the home of immigrant parents were connected, similar and familiar.
The struggle against poverty has seen some serious reverses since King’s time. The income gap between rich and poor is the highest it’s been since being first measured in 1967. The number of children living in poverty has risen steadily since then.
In my classroom, with our guest speaker, I heard that both families were struggling to make it in a world where work comes in odd places at odd times, when it comes at all. I knew that Maria's mother and father recently returned from a trip to the emergency room with her baby brother, a sure sign that they are one of the millions of uninsured people around us.
I left the classroom that day with a renewed desire to see economic justice for all people, especially children. I will start by searching for ways to teach the goals of the Poor People's Campaign to my elementary school students and to our community. The connection between the miner and my students was, for me, just the beginning.
Barton is an elementary school teacher in South Carolina.
Comments
Trevor, I was in college
Trevor, I was in college 1967-1971 in Greensboro, right in the midst of the civil rights demonstrations and the protests against the Vietnam War. I am so happy you are keeping the ideas of that time alive in your classroom. Our students grow up in isolation, and families choose to spend time with people like themselves. How wonderful that you are opening their thoughts and experiences to others. I spent yesterday morning teaching Building Character at the Hollis Academy Arts Festival for a 5th or 6th year. This was the first time I did not just play my flute. The students (3rd grade) responded well to my integration of the story of my mother and father-in-law (SC Holocaust survivors). I would be happy to tell that story in your class if requested... or in other classes.
As I reread this piece, I
As I reread this piece, I thought of something else I wanted to say as I wrote it. Public Schools seem to me to be great places to see the dream of the Poor People's Campaign come true. Most of the 'institutions' in our country are built on our choices to be with people who look like us, think like us, and act like us. Change rarely comes through institutions like these - especially changes that involve good jobs, good health care, and good housing for the poor, changes that involve economic justice. In my opinion, public schools are at their best when they are built on people who don't look alike, think alike, or act alike because we are more likely to change when we are with people who are different from us than if we are with people who are the same as us. So it was with the miner and our students. They were different, but in their 'friendship' they found a common experience, an experience that could lead them to work together for changes in our economic system, changes that could make the dream of the Poor People's Campaign come true. Here's to public schools!
I might be a bit
I might be a bit old-fashioned but isn't the best anti-poverty program a job? If so... how does the government create a job, precisely, and how would they do it without visiting economic injustice on those who don't need anti-poverty programs? How would the government provide healthcare without visiting economic injustice on those who don't need governmental help? And how does the government provide housing without inflicting economic injustice on people who don't need help to get a house?
It seems to me that the entire concept of "economic justice" is unique in that it is a zero-sum game, whereas no other form of justice requires that injustice be visited on another to provide justice to the wronged. (Speaking of such, is someone who is impoverished wronged in some way? If so, who is the guilty party and if you could identify this guilty party, how should they be penalized to provide justice to the impoverished?) You do not have to be unjust to a rapist for his victim to receive justice; the thief is treated with just as much justice as the one from whom he stole, given that the just result is that he be punished and they be compensated. However, if you give an impoverished person "economic justice", you are necessarily increasing the resources they have and seeing as how the government would provide this justice, they would need to get those resources from somewhere. I suppose a government could run its own farms, construction firms, oil wells, and other means of producing resources, but since governments are not competitive and have the power to prevent their enterprises from going bankrupt, the success of the government in procuring resources to give economic justice to the impoverished is success at the expense of someone else. In other words, someone else must have their resources taken or their access to resources reduced for the government to give greater access to resources to an impoverished person and this enforced reduction in resources is unjust.
Now, nongovernmental economic justice is NOT a zero-sum game because an impoverished person getting a job and a house and health insurance does not deprive anyone else of these things. Jobs are not static and both houses and healthcare can increase in quantity without it being taken from someone else who has these things. True economic justice, therefore, is an enterprise for which the government is a virulent poison and demanding that the government step in to run the enterprise makes it toxic. It is a mark of goodness that we are charitable to the naked, the hungry, the thirsty, the sick, the frightened, the alone, and the weak but it is damnable to help these people by putting a gun to the head of others. It is not needed and it is not just.
Hi Keith. Thank you for your
Hi Keith. Thank you for your thoughtful response. I disagree with your philosophy about government - that it is a "virulent poison." My philosophy of government is that it can be a "helpful antidote" for the needs of people, needs like housing, healthcare and jobs. I suppose these differing philosophies are what makes us conservative and liberal. I believe that when there is little or no government arbitration, economic power stays in the hands of the few and economic weakness remains the lot of the many. I hope to teach a generation of thinkers and doers who can find creative ways to keep the negative rights of our constitution alive and well - freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, etc. - and to grow positive rights for all people -meaningful work, decent shelter, and healthcare. I hope our common ground is a belief that so many children living below the federal poverty level, so many people unable to find work, and so many people without healthcare are wrongs that needs to be righted. I also hope that even though we have different philosophies about the nature and work of government, we can work hard together to build a society that is more human for all people.