Honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

(we are reprinting this article that we presented on our SCANPH website and keeping it going once again and welcome your thoughts or favorite quotes)

We welcome your favorite quotes from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on housing and community development to be included on this page. Please send your most memorable quote or clip.

(from Wikipedia)

In 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference organized a Poor People's Campaign to address issues of economic justice and housing for the poor in the United States, aiming itself at rebuilding America's cities. The Poor People's Campaign did not focus on just poor black people but addressed all poor people.

Martin Luther King, Jr. labeled the Poor People's Campaign the "second phase," of the civil rights struggle - setting goals such as gathering activists to lobby Congress for an "Economic Bill of Rights," Dr. King also saw a crying need to confront a Congress that had demonstrated its "hostility to the poor" - appropriating "military funds with alacrity and generosity," but providing "poverty funds with miserliness."

Under the "economic bill of rights" the Poor People's Campaign asked for the federal government to prioritize helping the poor with an antipoverty package that included housing and a guaranteed annual income for all Americans.

('Our God Is Marching On!' speech in Montgomery, Alabama, March 25, 1965)
"Let us therefore continue our triumphant march to the realization of the American dream. Let us march on segregated housing until every ghetto or social and economic depression dissolves, and Negroes and whites live side by side in decent, safe, and sanitary housing."

(Beyond Vietnam - A Time to Break the Silence, April 4, 1967)
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

(Speech to the AFL-CIO, December 11, 1961)
"Our needs are identical with labor's needs: Decent wages, fair working conditions, livable housing, old-age security, health and welfare measures, conditions in which families can grow, have education for their children, and respect in the community."

(submitted by Bob Erlenbusch)
"True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."

(submitted by Eric Ares, Community Organizer)
"It is time for all people of conscience to call upon America to return to her true home of brotherhood and peaceful pursuits. We cannot remain silent as our nation engages in one of history's most cruel and senseless wars. During these days of human travail, we must encourage creative dissenters. We need them because the thunder of their fearless voices will be the only sound stronger than the blasts of bombs and the clamor of war hysteria. Those of us who love peace must organize as effectively as war hawks. As they spread the propaganda of war, we must spread the propaganda of peace."

(submitted January 15, 2010 by Robert Dhondrup, Director of Communications for SCANPH)
This is my email signature that I have been using for the past two years. "True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice."