January 16, 2019 The Skanner Portland & Seattle Page 3
Honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
America cont’d from pg 2
Blacks at 46.3 percent;
but still lower than its
earlier pre-crisis rate of
47.7.
Housing also remains
troubled for renters as
well. According to the
National
Low-Income
Housing Coalition, the
nation lacks more than 7
million affordable rent-
al homes that affect 43.8
million families. More-
over, 11 million families
pay more than half of
their income on housing
and are considered se-
verely-cost burdened.
As of January 3, over
1,100 HUD contracts with
landlords for its Section
8 rental voucher pro-
gram expired. By Febru-
ary, another 1,000 more
contracts are expected
to expire. At press time,
the stalemated federal
government shutdown
continued, leaving mil-
lions of people uncertain
about their lives, or live-
lihoods or both. While
landlords and HUD fig-
ure out the paperwork,
1.2 million families re-
lying on this vital rental
support program remain
at risk.
Also caught in partisan
bickering of a federal
government shutdown
are men and women —
the military and civil
servants — whose ser-
vice to the country is
deemed so essential that
they must continue to
work without knowing
when another paycheck
will arrive. Another
800,000 furloughed fed-
eral workers may be at
home; but like others af-
fected by the shutdown,
they too still need to pay
their rent or mortgage,
honor their financial ob-
ligations and take care of
children as best they can.
When times are tough
financially, a range of
predatory
lenders
seize opportunities to
tempt those who are
hard-pressed for cash
with interest rates on
loans that would make
a bookie blush. When
a loan of only a few
hundred dollars comes
with interest payments
that double or triple the
cash borrowed, preda-
tory lenders are ready
to exploit those with
few or no financial op-
tions.
Those who are unpaid
or underemployed —
those who are working
but failing to earn a sal-
ary comparable to their
education and training,
student loan repay-
ments can take a finan-
cial backseat to hous-
ing, utilities, or other
daily living needs.
At press deadline, the
federal shutdown was
approaching the 1995
shutdown record of 21
days.
In 1967 Dr. King ad-
vised his Stanford
University audience,
“Somewhere we must
come to see that social
progress never rolls
in on the wheels of in-
evitability. It comes
through the tireless ef-
forts and the persistent
work of dedicated in-
dividuals…. And so, we
must help time, and we
must realize that the
time is always right to
do right.”
This year, may we all
honor Dr. King and do
our respective efforts
to make America live
up to its promise of op-
portunity for all.
Charlene Crowell is the
Center for Responsible
Lending’s Communica-
tions Deputy Director. She
can be reached at Char-
lene.crowell@responsi-
blelending.org.
The Skanner News would like to thank
the following sponsors for their
support of the 2019 Martin Luther
King, Jr. Special Edition
Bureau of
Environmental
Services
CARE Oregon
City of Portland
Procurement Services
Constructing Hope
Enterprise Holding
Home Forward
Kaiser Permanente
Lilly
Multnomah
Athletic Club
Multnomah County
Purchasing
NW Natural
Oregon Lottery
Pacific Power & Light
PCRI
Portland Community
College
Portland State
University
Portland Trail Blazers
Prosper Portland
Providence
TriMet
Turner Construction
Uber
University of Oregon
Vancouver Avenue
Baptist Church
Wells Fargo
MLK’s Vision Matters Today for the 43
Million Americans Living in Poverty
Joshua F.J. Inwood
The Conversation
n April 4, 1968, Martin
Luther King Jr. was assas-
sinated in Memphis, while
fighting for a 10-cent wage
increase for garbage workers.
These efforts by King were part
of a broader and more sustained
initiative known as the Poor Peo-
ple’s Campaign.
King was working to broaden
the scope of the civil rights move-
ment to include poverty and the
end of the war in Vietnam. King
and his leadership team planned
to bring thousands of poor peo-
ple to Washington, D.C., where
they would camp out on the Na-
tional Mall until Congress passed
legislation to eradicate poverty.
King was convinced that for
the civil rights movement to
achieve its goals, poverty need-
ed to become a central focus of
the movement. He believed the
poor could lead a movement that
would revolutionize society and
end poverty. As King noted, “The
only real revolutionary, people
say, is a man who has nothing to
lose. There are millions of poor
people in this country who have
little, or nothing to lose.”
With over 43 million people
living in poverty in the United
States today, King’s ideas still
hold much power.
O
The Poor People’s Campaign
In the last three years of his life
and ministry King had grown
frustrated with the slow pace of
reform and the lack of funding
for anti-poverty programs. In
1966, for example, King moved
to Chicago and lived in an urban
slum to bring attention to the
plight of the urban poor in north-
ern cities. His experiences in the
South had convinced him that
elimination of poverty was im-
portant to winning the long-term
battle for civil and social rights.
It was also at this time that King
began to think about leading a
march to Washington, D.C., to end
poverty. King explained the cam-
paign saying,:
“Then we poor people will move
on Washington, determined to
stay there until the legislative and
executive branches of the govern-
ment take serious and adequate
action on jobs and income.”
King was assassinated before
he could lead the campaign. And
while the effort continued, the
campaign could not meet King’s
goals of poverty elimination, uni-
versal access to health care and ed-
ucation, and a guaranteed income
that would keep people out of pov-
erty.
Why it matters today
At a time when millions in the
U.S. are poor and disenfranchised,
the Poor People’s campaign re-
mains as relevant for the U.S. as it
was 50 years ago. Consider the ev-
idence:
At least 1.5 million households
in the United States with about 3
million children are surviving on
cash incomes of no more than $2
per day.
A 2017 United Nations report
found infant mortality rates in the
U.S. to be the highest in the devel-
oped world. Children alone com-
prised 32.6 percent of all people in
poverty.
The World Income Database
found that the U.S. has the highest
rate of inequality among all West-
ern countries.
Making this situation worse,
many of the welfare and poverty
elimination programs have been
cut back or eliminated. A recent
Washington Post investigation
found that extreme poverty has
nearly doubled since major wel-
fare reform efforts in the 1990s
under then-President Bill Clinton.
How can King’s ideas
help today?
At the core of King’s anti-pov-
erty message were two key ideas.
The first was a guarantee that the
federal government would pro-
vide every able-bodied American
with a job. The second was for the
federal government to provide a
national basic income that would
ensure a minimum concrete sum
of money for every American re-
gardless of their employment sta-
tus.
In his 1967 speech at Stanford
University, King argued that the
time had come to “guarantee an an-
nual minimum — and livable — in-
come for every American family.”
The idea was to ensure every U.S.
citizen would be able to live above
the poverty line. King was assas-
sinated before he could present a
fully developed policy proposal.
Currently, several Nordic na-
tions, most notably Finland, are
considering such a proposal. Two
economists, Debraj Ray and Kelle
Moene have argued that a uni-
versal income has the potential to
boost GDP and productivity. The
premise is that if you give people
who currently lack means more
money to spend, they will contrib-
ute to the economy through in-
creased consumption.
As Americans ponder the un-
finished work of the Poor People’s
Campaign, I believe a guaranteed
national income is one idea that
needs to be examined.
Joshua Inwood is associate profes-
sor of Geography Senior Research
Associate in the Rock Ethics Insti-
tute, Pennsylvania State University.