February 22, 2006

DIRECTOR'S CORNER

by TIM HARRIS

This MLK Day, Real Change urges our readers to take to the streets. Join us, the Statewide Poverty Action Network, and other anti-poverty activists in Olympia to send a strong message to our legislators that poverty can and must be ended now. For information about the Olympia march and rally, please see the SPAN website at www.povertyaction.org.

I’ve written about King’s Riverside speech—which draws out the connections between a war economy, poverty, and race—in this space before, but as we enter 2006, his call of nearly 40 years ago for a “true revolution of values” is especially current.

“ True compassion” said King, “is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. …A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

“ Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism.”

Come to Olympia, or join the Seattle March (Info at www.MLKSeattle.org), but do something. Now. To quote King again, “We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late.”