Opinion
Dr. King's dream of poverty's end still elusive in Florida
Rhonda Swan
Published: January 20, 2013
Barack Obama is not the fulfillment of Dr. Martin Luther King's dream.Published: January 20, 2013
His two successful campaigns for the White House signal that we are much closer than when King delivered his famous speech in 1963. But we still have a long way to go. Especially in Florida.
With Martin Luther King Day approaching, I wanted to know what the civil rights icon had to say about the pressing issues of his day that we still struggle with nearly 45 years after his death.
King was in Memphis to advocate for fair wages and union representation for Memphis sanitation workers when an assassin's bullet claimed his life in 1968.
Neither the poor nor union workers are getting any love in Florida.
Speaking to his Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity brothers in 1967, King said, "There are still way too many people seeking to be conscientious objectors in the war against poverty. We must see that whatever diminishes the poor diminishes everybody else."
Twenty-five percent of Florida's children, 14 percent of its seniors and 18 percent of its women are poor.
Count Florida's lawmakers among the conscientious objectors who do not see that what diminishes the poor diminishes the rest of us. Instead of balancing the budget by closing tax loopholes for corporations that cost Florida $500 million a year, they have chosen since the Great Recession to balance the budget on the backs of the poor, sick and elderly with hundreds of millions in cuts to social service programs.
In a speech before the AFL-CIO in 1962, King spoke of how bad economic times embolden the forces against labor. He said the organized labor movement has been "fought mercilessly by those who blindly believe their right to uncontrolled profits was a law of the universe, and that without the maintenance of the old order catastrophe faced the nation."
How little things have changed.
In a Christmas Eve sermon in 1967, King said, "I still have a dream today that in all of our state houses and city halls men will be elected to go there to do justly and love mercy and walk humbly with their God."
Count on that dream being deferred when Florida's legislative session begins in March.
Rhonda Swan is an editorial writer for The Palm Beach Post and author of Dancing to the Rhythm of My Soul: A Sister's Guide for Transforming Madness into Gladness. She can be reached at rswan@floridavoices.com