Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Denver VOICE article: Fulfilling King’s Last Dream
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This will be in the December issue of the Denver VOICE streetpaper.
Fulfilling King's Last Dream
Fulfilling King's Last Dream
by: Jason Bosch
This past November I visited Glendora, Mississippi to meet up with Cheri Honkala and the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC).
Glendora is where 14-year-old Emmitt Till's body was found in 1955 after he was brutally murdered for whistling at a white woman (an all white jury later acquitted his white murders). Today racism in Glendora is less prominent than the devastating poverty of the area.
On a nearby plantation (they still call it that) I saw a row of what appeared to be old abandoned sharecropper shacks alongside railroad tracks. Windows were broken. Ripped screen doors barely hung from rusty hinges. Grey wood panels rotted beneath rusted metal rooftops. As we approached, several beautiful children peered through the screen door of one of the units. Their mothers came out. Two sisters, one who later explained to me that she had been evicted from one of the other units (in equal disrepair) because she could not afford the $135 rent. They were now all living together in this one small unit. The other sister stood with her back to me wearing a heavy coat with the hood covering her head. I wanted to tell her that poverty is nothing to be ashamed of.
While their case is extreme, these two sisters are not alone in their poverty. More and more are becoming poor and poorer as mega-corporations play city against city, state against state, nation against nation, and worker against worker to see who will sacrifice the most for the least amount in return. Wages drop or remain stagnant as the cost of living rises annually. The few remaining safety nets and consumer protections are being dismantled leaving the common people isolated in competition for decreasing lower and middle class wealth. Home foreclosures are at their highest since the Great Depression (1 notice every 13 seconds in the U.S. according to responsiblelending.org). Unemployment is the highest ever recorded and the experts almost all unanimously agree that things are going to get worse.
I was in Glendora helping to organize the "March to Fulfill the Dream", which will begin in Marks, Mississippi on April 4th, 2010 (on the anniversary of MLK Jr.'s assassination). This historic two and a half month long march will be led primarily by poor and homeless people and supported by musicians, artists, poets, performers, actors, photographers, filmmakers, and other cultural visionaries from across America. It will travel from the Mississippi Delta up through the rust-belt and culminate in Detroit at the 2010 U.S. Social Forum on June 22nd with the aim of building multiracial solidarity among poor people to demand housing, health care, living wage jobs, and education.
In 1967 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference had organized a similar Poor People's Campaign as the "second phase" of the civil rights movement. They planned to lobby congress (which King's said had demonstrated "hostility to the poor") for an "Economic Bill of Rights", which included things such as housing and a guaranteed income for all Americans. They organized a poor people's march to begin in Marks, Mississippi on May 12th but King was assassinated on April 4th, one month before the march was to happen. The organizers went ahead with the march to Washington D.C. where "resurrection city" was built by the poor on the mall. That march faced many problems but the vision remained intact. The 2010 March to Fulfill the Dream intends on reawakening King's last dream.
December 6th, 2009 from 1:00 – 4:30 PM at the Mercury Café (2199 California St., Denver) ArgusFest will host a special event with music, film, poetry, and joined by Lee Ballinger of PPEHRC sharing information about the upcoming march and cultural events being organized across the country in support. The event will coincide with our 6th Annual Fair Trade Holiday Bazaar. We are calling on artists, musicians, poets, performers, and supporters to come learn more about the fastest growing social movement in America today and become involved. For more information visit http://www.argusfest.org or call Jason at 303-669-7286
This past November I visited Glendora, Mississippi to meet up with Cheri Honkala and the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC).
Glendora is where 14-year-old Emmitt Till's body was found in 1955 after he was brutally murdered for whistling at a white woman (an all white jury later acquitted his white murders). Today racism in Glendora is less prominent than the devastating poverty of the area.
On a nearby plantation (they still call it that) I saw a row of what appeared to be old abandoned sharecropper shacks alongside railroad tracks. Windows were broken. Ripped screen doors barely hung from rusty hinges. Grey wood panels rotted beneath rusted metal rooftops. As we approached, several beautiful children peered through the screen door of one of the units. Their mothers came out. Two sisters, one who later explained to me that she had been evicted from one of the other units (in equal disrepair) because she could not afford the $135 rent. They were now all living together in this one small unit. The other sister stood with her back to me wearing a heavy coat with the hood covering her head. I wanted to tell her that poverty is nothing to be ashamed of.
While their case is extreme, these two sisters are not alone in their poverty. More and more are becoming poor and poorer as mega-corporations play city against city, state against state, nation against nation, and worker against worker to see who will sacrifice the most for the least amount in return. Wages drop or remain stagnant as the cost of living rises annually. The few remaining safety nets and consumer protections are being dismantled leaving the common people isolated in competition for decreasing lower and middle class wealth. Home foreclosures are at their highest since the Great Depression (1 notice every 13 seconds in the U.S. according to responsiblelending.org). Unemployment is the highest ever recorded and the experts almost all unanimously agree that things are going to get worse.
I was in Glendora helping to organize the "March to Fulfill the Dream", which will begin in Marks, Mississippi on April 4th, 2010 (on the anniversary of MLK Jr.'s assassination). This historic two and a half month long march will be led primarily by poor and homeless people and supported by musicians, artists, poets, performers, actors, photographers, filmmakers, and other cultural visionaries from across America. It will travel from the Mississippi Delta up through the rust-belt and culminate in Detroit at the 2010 U.S. Social Forum on June 22nd with the aim of building multiracial solidarity among poor people to demand housing, health care, living wage jobs, and education.
In 1967 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference had organized a similar Poor People's Campaign as the "second phase" of the civil rights movement. They planned to lobby congress (which King's said had demonstrated "hostility to the poor") for an "Economic Bill of Rights", which included things such as housing and a guaranteed income for all Americans. They organized a poor people's march to begin in Marks, Mississippi on May 12th but King was assassinated on April 4th, one month before the march was to happen. The organizers went ahead with the march to Washington D.C. where "resurrection city" was built by the poor on the mall. That march faced many problems but the vision remained intact. The 2010 March to Fulfill the Dream intends on reawakening King's last dream.
December 6th, 2009 from 1:00 – 4:30 PM at the Mercury Café (2199 California St., Denver) ArgusFest will host a special event with music, film, poetry, and joined by Lee Ballinger of PPEHRC sharing information about the upcoming march and cultural events being organized across the country in support. The event will coincide with our 6th Annual Fair Trade Holiday Bazaar. We are calling on artists, musicians, poets, performers, and supporters to come learn more about the fastest growing social movement in America today and become involved. For more information visit http://www.argusfest.org or call Jason at 303-669-7286
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