Image: Corbis
Allow me to post for you the original caption of this picture.
5/23/1968-Washington, D.C.: A group of Poor People marchers sing and chant outside the Longworth House Office Building. When they refused to stop, police arrested 18 out of a group of about 200. The arrests were the first since the campaign started.
Now, in case you don’t know, the Longworth House Office Building is a building used by the United States House of Representatives. In other words, these folks were demanding that GOVERNMENT do something to address poverty in their community. Today, Washington D.C. spends about spends $14400 per student in public school (one of the highest per student expenditures in the nation) yet poverty still remains a major problem in that city. Conclusion: While government can create laws, it cannot solve social ills–no matter how much money is thrown at these problems.
Fast forward to 2009. Once again, poor people are being used to demand that government do something about their economic situation. Keep a finger on that word “government”.
ATLANTA (AP) — The Southern Christian Leadership Conference hopes to mobilize 50,000 people in the Mississippi Delta this summer in a campaign to draw attention to the poverty of a region where some Americans still live in homes with dirt floors and brown water flows from their faucets.
The effort is much like the one envisioned by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who was planning a Poor People’s Campaign and march on Washington before he was assasinated in 1968.
SCLC Interim President Byron Clay announced the initiative in an interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday. He said the efforts would be centered not on the nation’s capital, but in towns along the soil-rich, resource-poor Delta region.
“We will bring this nation face to face with poverty,” Clay said. “We are organizing poor people of all colors, to form the kind of beloved community that Martin Luther King Jr. talked about.”
A report published earlier this year by Oxfam America found that residents in the Mississippi Delta are living in conditions similar to the world’s poorest countries. (more…)
Now if your are Black and reading this, there is a high probability that you have kinfolk who live in this region. Unlike the well-groomed neighborhoods where most of us dwell, there is a fraction of our family who live in these out of the way towns. Also, while some of our family member in these areas have taken us up on our offer to stay with us while they find employment in our neck of the woods, many family members decide to stay back “home”. This is why I categorically reject this whole notion that poor Black folks are “left behind” in this country by other folks.
Just over 40 years later since that picture was taken above, once again poor folks are being trotted out to engage in synchronized begging to government.
The problem I have with this is that this whole display of ignorance completely ignores one of the biggest problems that has been entrenched in that region for years. Voter fraud and political corruption.
As you know, the delta region is part of what is known as the “Black belt” (a region in our nation with the most Black voters). Last year, I interviewed the District Attorney for Perry County in Alabama on this very issue. In the interview, he confirms that Black voters (and poor Whites) are routinely taken advantage of by both parties. However for Black voters, Democrats are the offending party. Why? Because Democrats have controlled those areas for decades. Yet these po’ folks continue to vote for a party that has screwed them for years.
Am I suggesting that the Republican party can “help” them? Nope. Politicians from both of these parties have made it pretty clear that when it comes to poor people, they are nothing more than necessary props to get what they want. What I am suggesting that as long as these individuals continue to hand in their votes to the same party over and over again, there is no incentive for that party to break the status quo. The interview is below.
Instead of dealing with this most powerful form of protest (the right to vote), organizations like the SCLC would rather parade these poor individuals along the countryside in an effort to fan more guilt all across this nation. This is a racket that does NOTHING to help the poor and it needs to stop.
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Trotting out the poor…again
by Duane on March 26th, 2009 at 1:50 pmImage: Corbis
Allow me to post for you the original caption of this picture.
Now, in case you don’t know, the Longworth House Office Building is a building used by the United States House of Representatives. In other words, these folks were demanding that GOVERNMENT do something to address poverty in their community. Today, Washington D.C. spends about spends $14400 per student in public school (one of the highest per student expenditures in the nation) yet poverty still remains a major problem in that city. Conclusion: While government can create laws, it cannot solve social ills–no matter how much money is thrown at these problems.
Fast forward to 2009. Once again, poor people are being used to demand that government do something about their economic situation. Keep a finger on that word “government”.
Now if your are Black and reading this, there is a high probability that you have kinfolk who live in this region. Unlike the well-groomed neighborhoods where most of us dwell, there is a fraction of our family who live in these out of the way towns. Also, while some of our family member in these areas have taken us up on our offer to stay with us while they find employment in our neck of the woods, many family members decide to stay back “home”. This is why I categorically reject this whole notion that poor Black folks are “left behind” in this country by other folks.
Just over 40 years later since that picture was taken above, once again poor folks are being trotted out to engage in synchronized begging to government.
The problem I have with this is that this whole display of ignorance completely ignores one of the biggest problems that has been entrenched in that region for years. Voter fraud and political corruption.
As you know, the delta region is part of what is known as the “Black belt” (a region in our nation with the most Black voters). Last year, I interviewed the District Attorney for Perry County in Alabama on this very issue. In the interview, he confirms that Black voters (and poor Whites) are routinely taken advantage of by both parties. However for Black voters, Democrats are the offending party. Why? Because Democrats have controlled those areas for decades. Yet these po’ folks continue to vote for a party that has screwed them for years.
Am I suggesting that the Republican party can “help” them? Nope. Politicians from both of these parties have made it pretty clear that when it comes to poor people, they are nothing more than necessary props to get what they want. What I am suggesting that as long as these individuals continue to hand in their votes to the same party over and over again, there is no incentive for that party to break the status quo. The interview is below.
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Instead of dealing with this most powerful form of protest (the right to vote), organizations like the SCLC would rather parade these poor individuals along the countryside in an effort to fan more guilt all across this nation. This is a racket that does NOTHING to help the poor and it needs to stop.
Sphere: Related Content