by State Senator Kevin Parker
This year, as we celebrate what would have been the 95th birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., one of the preeminent architects of the modern Civil Rights Movement, two interwoven aspects of his life and legacy come into focus. First is the fact that 56 years after his death, our communities are still singing the same refrain, “We shall overcome . . . one day.”
- Advertisement -
Secondly, what Dr. King referred to as the fierce urgency of now. “We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now,” he told the crowd at the Lincoln Memorial. Now is the time for us to open the doors of opportunity for all God’s children,” he said. “Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.” It seems as though Dr. King could have made that speech this year, and it would still be relevant. Thus, in this critical national election year, I am urging us all to refuse to accept that there are insufficient funds to cash our promissory note that Dr. King and his followers went to the nation’s capital to cash.
Conversely, now is the time for us to live up to the ideals upon which this nation was founded. Now is the time for us to provide a quality education for all our children. Now is the time for us to invest in our future by cleaning up our environment and diversifying to a green economy. Now is the time for us to put meat to the bones of hope by providing our citizens with a living wage with benefits.
In the immediate aftermath of the 1965 Watts riots, Dr. King, in a conversation with Bayard Rustin, said: “I worked to get these people the right to eat hamburgers [at segregated restaurants], and now I’ve got to do something…to help them to get the money to buy it.”
Unfortunately, he did not live long enough to affect an aggressive economic empowerment agenda.
But we do. At the same time that we draw inspiration from his words, we must emulate his actions and transform his beliefs into a movement for social change. Yet here’s a snapshot of the America we have created and are living in since those humongous gains of the Civil Rights Movement:
A functioning and affordable healthcare system remains elusive in the United States. Around 1 in 10 adults have medical debt. Three million people owe more than $10,000. Black adults, people with disabilities, and those in poor health are most likely to have significant medical debt.
Student debt stands at a whopping $1.75 trillion in federal and private loans.
According to a 2021 report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition, no worker in any state could afford a two-bedroom rental home with wages earned from a standard 40-hour work week. In New York, people would need to work 94 hours a week at the state’s minimum wage to afford a 1-bedroom rental.
Because of its effect on every other issue, the attack on voting rights is arguably the most concerning problem in the United States. Between January 1 and December 7, 2021, 19 states passed 34 laws restricting voting access.
Add to all of these issues climate justice, reproductive rights, the erosion of LBGTQ rights, wage inequality, and racism, and it is clear that we have cooked up a very bitter hodgepodge of injustices.
Dr. King challenged all of us in America not only to live up to the ideals upon which this nation was founded but also to expand those parameters – to put our bodies, hearts, and money where our mouths are and to make the ideal of justice and equality something more than words. Honoring King’s memory and continuing his much-needed legacy demands that we do more in all fields of endeavor…now.
I’m convinced Dr. King would ask and inspire something more from us: that we take a day to consider the injustices that remain rampant in our society and then take action to effect change.
Therefore, each of us should spend part of that day not only reminding ourselves of the principles for which he lived and died but also contemplating how we can make them real – in our own lives, in the lives of our children, and in the life of our nation. Moreover, how we can use the titanic power of our voting voices to secure a better future for our children. As Dr. King so eloquently put it, “History has thrust upon our generation an indescribably important destiny — to complete a process of democratization which our nation has too long developed too slowly. How we deal with this crucial situation will determine our moral health as individuals, our cultural health asa region, our political health as a nation, and our prestige as a leader of the free world.” We need to do so…now!
