King’s Unfinished Battle Against Poverty

Sam Fulwood and Melissa Boteach have a piece for CAP about Martin Luther King’s turn to anti-poverty advocacy before he was killed:

Nearly 40 years ago, King understood that previous national efforts to end poverty were stymied by a fundamental misunderstanding of the problem’s scope:

While none of these remedies [housing assistance, improved educational facilities, income assistance] in itself is unsound, all have a fatal disadvantage. The programs have never proceeded on a coordinated basis or at a similar rate of development. Housing measures have fluctuated at the whims of legislative bodies. They have been piecemeal and pygmy. Educational reforms have been even more sluggish and entangled in bureaucratic stalling and economy-dominated decisions. Family assistance stagnated in neglect and then suddenly was discovered to be the central issue on the basis of hasty and superficial studies. At no time has a total, coordinated and fully adequate program been conceived. As a consequence, fragmentary and spasmodic reforms have failed to reach down to the profoundest needs of the poor.

King’s observations hold true more than 40 years after his death, but 2010 is the year to change that.

All very true. The persistence of massive poverty—especially among children—in such a wealthy society is a scandal.