Martin Luther King Day Blog
I have been thinking about what message to give to our members to appropriately celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. Clearly he was a great man who made incredible contributions that affect all of us who are not part of the majority on a daily basis. In fact, his works and work affect all Americans. Much of what he wrote about was poverty, a subject near and dear to the lives of most Americans with Disabilities. He repeatedly called for a government that would eradicate poverty and that would treat people fairly. He called for a government that would provide everyone with a basic standard of living, a safe and clean home, and meaningful work. These are all things that still remain a dream for most Americans with Disabilities and people with disabilities throughout the world. He was a wise man and was clear about the cure for the greed and hatred that breed discrimination and poverty. The cure is organizing and using the law. That is the only thing that will work and the only thing that ever has worked. In 1967 in a speech called “Where Do We Go From Here—Chaos or Community” he put forth a call to his people. I am today reminding all of us that the work is not done and we must continue to heed his words. His words are so much more powerful than anything I could say so I will quote him liberally in this maiden blog that I will be doing for the Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition.
In this speech he said about poverty “The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization, when men ate each other because they had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume the abundant animal life around them. The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty” He then called people to action by stating that we must show our dissatisfaction with the status quo. He said “Let us be dissatisfied until America will no longer have a high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds. Let us be dissatisfied until the tragic walls that separate the outer city of wealth and comfort and the inner city of poverty and despair shall be crushed by the battering rams of the forces of justice. [,et us be dissatisfied until those that live on the outskirts of hope are brought into the metropolis of daily security. Let us be dissatisfied until slums are cast into the junk heaps of history, and every family is living in a decent sanitary home. Let us be dissatisfied until the dark yesterdays of segregated schools will be transformed into bright tomorrows of quality, integrated education. Let us be dissatisfied until integration is not seen as a problem but as an opportunity to participate in the beauty of diversity”
He explained power and the need to organize—how familiar does this sound? Substitute disabled for the word “Negro” (this was the word used at the time, no longer an acceptable term) and see the similarities.
“Another basic challenge is to discover how to organize our strength in terms of economic and political power. No one can deny that the Negro is in dire need of this kind of legitimate power. Indeed, one of the great problems that the Negro confronts is his lack of power. From old plantations of the South to newer ghettos of the North, the Negro has been confined to a life of voicelessness and powerlessness. Stripped of the right to make decisions concerning his life and destiny he has been subject to the authoritarian and sometimes whimsical decisions of this white power structure. The plantation and ghetto were created by those who had power. both to confine those who had no power and to perpetuate their powerlessness. The problem of transforming the ghetto, therefore, is a problem of power-confrontation of the forces of power demanding change and the forces of power dedicated to the preserving of the status quo. Now power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose. It is the strength required to bring about social, political and economic change. Walter Reuther defined power one day. He said, "Power is the ability of a labor union like the U.A.W. to make the most powerful corporation in the world, General Motors, say 'Yes' when it wants to say 'No.' That's power.”
The power we have—and the power we need may not be about General Motors but it certainly is about the government. If we organize and use every breath, offer every resource at our disposal, and make sure that we include all of our brothers and sisters we can have that same power as the unions of days past. The power will be to make agencies like Medicaid, HUD, and human services say yes when they want to say no. The power will be to demand that we no longer have to choose between work and health care, that we no longer are the brunt of hatred by those that cannot stand to see us thrive. The power will be elevating us to a status of human being—
Finally, I want to talk about what Dr. King said about laws—he said that a law cannot make anyone love him but it can stop him from being lynched, something pretty important. Two years ago at our state meeting legal director Kevin Williams said “it doesn’t take a village, it takes a lawsuit.” We cannot always change what is in someone’s heart or what someone believes. We may not be able to stop them from hating us or resenting us but we certainly can keep up the political pressure to make sure that they respect us and stop the ongoing discrimination that affects our daily lives. This will only happen if we vigorously use the laws that were so hard fought, and remember on a daily basis to act in a way that would make Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. proud.
