Rights are a precious thing to Americans. With that in mind, I would like to propose another list of rights everyone in this country should have.
1. The right of every employable citizen to a decent job.
2. The right of every citizen to a minimum income.
3. The right of a decent house and the free choice of neighborhood.
4. The right to an adequate education.
5. The right to the full benefits of modern science in health care.
6. The right to have a say so in our nation’s political process.
I believe every American should enjoy the rights the above list represents.
Oh, wait a minute. Somebody has already said this, as long ago as 1968. It was called the Economic Bill of Rights and served as the center piece for the goals of the poor people’s campaign Martin Luther King, Jr. started, but did not live to see completed. In other words, a public effort to ensure economic freedoms that would allow people to have basic necessities every civilized and moral society should want for all its citizens was a major campaign more than forty years ago.
And look where we are. The percentage of Americans living in poverty has been increasing steadily in the last ten years. Average wages for American workers have remained stagnant for that same period of time. In 2013 a family of four with an income of $25,000 a year is not considered poor by our government, yet everybody knows that family cannot possible live on that amount of money and have adequate food, shelter, clothing, or healthcare. The economic disparity between the 99% and the 1% in this nation has quadrupled in the last 20 years rather than shrunk.
But many politicians keep telling us we cannot afford to do anything about what is happening, bad as it may be for some people. We need to tighten our belts further, they say. Austerity that disproportionately affects the poor is the price they have to pay for rich people gaming the system and getting us in a financial mess.
Of course, deep down we all know this is more about political corruption than sound economic policy, especially since the people who insist we must face the music economically as a nation are the same ones who supported two unfunded wars, tax breaks and a Medicare drug program we did not pay for, and are now insisting we must continue to give the Pentagon money it doesn’t need and in some instances isn’t even asking for.
Martin Luther King understood better than most that our nation’s strength and security depended as much on economic and social justice as it did on guns and tanks and missiles. But we are now living at a time when our government is broken and cannot function. I am convinced that the longer we elect politicians who want it to stay broken and who refuse to believe justice is essential for our nation’s future, the longer we will continue to get the government we deserve even when we say we don’t like it.
Martin Luther King believed that the future of our country was in the hands of its people as much as its political leaders. And that is why he led a people’s march on Washington in 1963, and was ready to lead another one in 1968 before he was struck down by an assassin’s bullet.
I wonder if the majority of voters will ever again believe we can change the way things are if we really want to?
