opinion
Child Poverty: Still an Epidemic in the U.S.
D
uring her research for the
Children’s Defense Fund’s
recent
report
“Held
Captive: Child Poverty in
America,” Pulitzer Prize-winning
journalist Julia Cass visited the
Mississippi Delta; New Orleans
and Baton Rouge, La.; and subur-
ban Long Island, NY, to profile
three different kinds of child
poverty. Her trip to Quitman
County, Miss. covered sadly
familiar ground: Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr. visited the Black share-
cropping community in Marks, the
seat of Quitman County, in the
summer of 1966 to preach at the
funeral of a friend, and Marks was
later chosen as the starting point of
the mule train that left Mississippi
for Washington, D.C. during the
Poor People’s Campaign.
Cass describes the community
Dr. King saw: “Quitman was one
of the poorest counties in America
in 1960. Many Black families
lived in rented houses or in shacks
on the plantations where they
worked, subject to eviction at any
time. The White side of town had
C hild W atCh
Marian Wright
Edelman
paved streets; the Black side was
unpaved. The Black schools,
housed in inferior, poorly ventilat-
ed buildings and using out-of-date
books from the White schools,
held split sessions so the children
could help plant, weed, and pick
cotton at different times of
year. Many families could not pay
the 25 cents it cost for a lunch at
school.”
Dr. Ralph Abernathy accompa-
nied Dr. King on that trip, and in
his autobiography he recalled how
deeply their visit with children at a
“fledgling” Head Start program
affected Dr. King: “We looked
around the primitive schoolhouse
and saw them watching us, wide-
eyed and silent, having been told
who we were. They seemed bright
and alert, but something bothered
me about them. Then I realized
what it was: virtually all of them
were under weight, a condition
that lent a special poignancy to
their enormous eyes.” After
watching the teacher divide a sin-
gle apple into quarters for four
hungry children at lunchtime, Dr.
King uncharacteristically broke
down in tears and had to leave the
room. Later, he said to Dr.
Abernathy, “I can’t get those chil-
it.” Making this poverty visible to
the whole nation became the goal
of the Poor People’s Campaign.
Senator Robert Kennedy had a
similar reaction when I accompa-
nied him on a trip to Mississippi
the next year so he could see the
poverty and hunger there first-
hand. His profound shock and
sadness motivated him to act
too.
Cass says, “Senator
Kennedy’s visit put hunger on the
national agenda and sparked a
After watching the teacher divide a
single apple into quarters for four
hungry children at lunchtime, Dr. King
uncharacteristically broke down in
tears and had to leave the room
dren out of my mind… We can’t
let that kind of poverty exist in this
country. I don’t think people real-
ly know that little school children
are slowly starving in the United
States of America. I didn’t know
coalition of individuals and groups
that produced reports on child
hunger, malnutrition, illness, and
death and pointed out the callous-
ness of the federal school lunch
program that had no place at its
table for six million needy chil-
dren whose families could not
afford to pay… The spotlight on
poverty, which shone for about a
decade (following Dr. King and
Senator Kennedy’s visits to the
Mississippi Delta), did succeed in
expanding the availability of food
commodities, food stamps and
free school lunches and break-
fasts. This basic safety net is still
helping long-time poor families,
and newly poor families losing
jobs and homes during the current
recession, avoid the kind of utter
destitution, hunger, malnutrition,
and starvation that shocked Dr.
King, Senator Kennedy and the
nation.” In the current debate over
the federal budget, some pieces of
the safety net are once again under
attack—yet this is one of the many
places where our nation has made
progress in fulfilling Dr. King’s
dream.
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Obama’s Attack on African Soil was Unjustified
S
aying that “It’s time for
Gadhafi to go,” President
Barack Obama joined a
coalition of colonialist countries to
invade Africa. Ignoring protests
from leaders of the African Union,
Obama partnered with NATO’s
(North
Atlantic
Treaty
Organization) league of neo-colo-
nialists to “get Gadhafi”.
Black Americans would do well
not to drink from the same cup of
Kool Aid as has Obama. We
should be aware that Western
media’s characterizations of
Gadhafi as “crazy” and “a brutal
dictator” deserve due scrutiny.
Mainstream media in NATO coun-
tries have played a major role in
demonization of Gadhafi to get the
acceptance across the world these
imperialists’ intervention in a civil
matter.
b uSineSS e XChange
William Reed
ted “an impeachable offense.”
Nation of Islam leader Louis
Farrakhan said Obama should
have a meeting with Gadhafi and
that “you can’t order him to step
down and get out, who the hell
you think you are?”
Obama failed to notice the
African Union’s caution that
“Libya’s territorial integrity
should be respected” and that
“outsiders have armed Libya’s
rebels to get access to the coun-
try’s oil.” Zimbabwe President
Robert Mugabe called Libya “an
African issue that should get its
solutions from Africans and not
from Europe and America”
Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe
called Libya ‘an African issue that
should get its solutions from Africans
and not from Europe and America’
Libyan sovereignty should have been
respected; is invasion an
impeachable offense?
Black Americans would do well
to not to drink from the same cup
of Kool Aid as Obama; who ignor-
ing the call of the African Union,
joined with old colonialist powers
to “get Gadhafi.” The West’s
mainstream media is enjoined in
telling the same ole story: that
Gadhafi “is crazy”, “a brutal dicta-
tor”, that “this is not about oil” and
that “we will be in and out quick-
ly.” The corporate media has
played a superb role piling on in
the demonization of Gadhafi
toward getting the world’s outright
acceptance of the imperialists’
intervention in an internal and
civil matter.
Cleveland Congressman Dennis
Kucinich said Obama has commit-
Mugabe was joined by South
African President Jacob Zuma in
saying that “the arming of the
rebels in Libya by the Americans
and other foreign western powers
is a direct attack on African sover-
eignty and a clear demonstration
of foreign interference.”
Were Libya’s revolts fuelled by
economic issues as the media
would have us believe? Black
Americans are as foolish as
Obama if they try to perceive
what is happening in Libya within
a Eurocentric perspective. Libya’s
system and the battle now taking
place are outside of Westerners’
imagination. Libya’s young peo-
ple are well dressed, fed and edu-
cated. Libyans earn more per
capita than the British. Libya’s
wealth has been fairly spread
throughout society. Every Libyan
gets free, and often excellent, edu-
cation, medical and health servic-
es. New colleges and hospitals are
impressive by any international
standard. All Libyans have a
house or a flat, a car and most
have televisions, video recorders
and telephones.
Gadhafi has been target of
aggression from the West since the
1980s. News coverage by Western
media is oversimplified, mislead-
ing and stacked toward getting rid
of Gadhafi. An array of anti-
Gadhafi spokespersons, most liv-
ing outside Libya, has been parad-
ed in front of us. The media and
their selected commentators have
done their best to manufacture an
opinion that Gadhafi is just anoth-
er tyrant amassing large sums of
money in Swiss bank accounts. In
contrast to Western depictions,
Libya utilized revenue from its oil
to develop the country and its peo-
ple. Instead of letting people know
that Libya has one of the world’s
highest standards of living,
Western media and Obama will
lead you to believe “we need to go
save them.”
Read the rest online at
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Week on the Web
Food dyes
are used in an
array of foods
on the shelves
of
food
pantries
everywhere.
But could they
cause hyper-
activity
in
children? The
FDA is investi-
gating … in “National News”
Talk show host and
actor Wendy Williams
(pictured) talks about
her busy schedule that
“can break you” unless
you’re careful … in
“Movies”
African Americans are
losing their bloc vot-
ing power by increas-
ingly moving out to the
suburbs … in “Opinion”
HBO is set to air season 2 of its hit
New Orleans drama ‘Treme’ … in
“Music”
Arizona has executed an African
American man that maintained his
innocence since his arrest for a rob-
bery gone bad in 1989 … in “Breaking
News”
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march 30, 2011 The Portland Skanner Page 5