Honoring Dr. King in the economic stimulus « It’s Getting Hot In Here

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was in Memphis 40 years ago, where he was assassinated, to help support the long struggle of the city’s sanitation workers for decent jobs and dignity. He was also speaking out against the Vietnam War, organizing a Poor People’s March on Washington, and crafting an Economic Bill of Rights, calling for massive government jobs programs to rebuild America’s cities. In Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community, the last book he released before he was killed, he wrote:

There is a need for a radical restructuring of the architecture of American society … For the evils of racism, poverty and militarism to die, a new set of values must be born. Our economy must become more person-centered than property-and profit-centered. Our government must depend more on its moral power than on its military power. Let us, therefore, not think of our movement as one that seeks to integrate the Negro into all the existing values of American society. Let us be those creative dissenters who call our beloved nation to a higher destiny.”

Today, the struggles for economic and racial justice must merge with the struggle to stop global warming. Its worst effects will be visited on the poor, and the great economic opportunity a clean energy future offers should be shared fairly with them. Equal protection and equal opportunity was what King demanded in the 1960s. We should be demanding the same today.

As Congress prepares a giant Economic Stimulus package — up to $150 billion in emergency spending — and George W. Bush suggests that it be more tax cuts for the rich, there is no better way to honor Dr. King’s memory and continue his struggle than to demand that Congress offer stimulus that is green and economically just. Click here to send a message to your member of Congress:

In considering your economic stimulus package, please work to ensure that all proposed tax cuts and direct spending promote a clean energy economy and opportunities for poor and working class people. Through strategic investments in energy efficiency, mass transit and a Clean Energy Corps, we can not only avoid short-term recession, but also put hundreds of thousands of people to work and create a secure economic and environmental future for all Americans.”

An ad hoc group of leaders from Van Jones of Green for All to Gillian Caldwell from 1Sky to Joel Rogers from the Center for State Innovation and Jessy Tolkan from the Energy Action Coalition has been working to develop more forward-thinking ideas for stimulus and pressure key members of Congress to build them into the plan. They could use your support.

Cross-posted from Grist.

About Billy

At the end of 2002, freaked out about the deepening climate crisis, Billy dropped out of Yale University in the middle of his junior year to build a youth movement. He co-founded and led the Energy Action Coalition, which has become the largest youth advocacy organization in the world working on clean energy and global warming issues. Since early 2008, Billy has expanded his work beyond the Energy Action Coalition into a focus on building the green economy and creating green jobs for young people. He has been a consultant for Green for All on their "Green Jobs Now" day of action and developed the idea and campaign to create a Clean Energy Corps, a proposal based on the Civilian Conservation Corps designed to rebuild the country and create millions of new jobs and opportunities for community service. The community service component, The Clean Energy Service Corps, has become law as part of the Serve America Act, and other components of the proposal have been incorporated into the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and the American Clean Energy and Security Act. A serial social entrepreneur, Billy has helped launch dozens of youth, climate and green jobs related organizations and initiatives, including Green Owl Records, a green music label affiliated with Warner Music Group; The Navajo Green Economy Coalition, which recently passed groundbreaking green jobs legislation on the Navajo Nation; and the Alignment Process, a collaborative of 50 large progressive organizations working on passing strong federal legislation to build a green economy and address global warming. Originally from New York City, he now lives with his wife Wahleah Johns and daughter Tohaana in Flagstaff, AZ.

2 Responses to “Honoring Dr. King in the economic stimulus”

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1 Jamie Henn Jan 22nd, 2008 at 12:05 pm

This is a fantastic initiative and exactly where I think we should be headed. Yesterday, in South Carolina, all the Democratic presidential candidates participated in a march to honor Dr. King. None of them mentioned a new, green dream, but later on in the debate, sparking a clean energy economy was the first thing out of their mouths when talking about the economy. We’re getting close. Right now it’s about connecting the dots: for the candidates, Congress, and most importantly, the millions of people who have never heard of “green jobs” or “green pathways out of poverty.” There is a lot of work still to be done, but this petition and initiative is part of an excellent first step.
2 Cameron Stiff Jan 24th, 2008 at 12:15 am

This is incredibly fascinating, as the US economy ostensibly ‘crashes’. Connecting those figures on the stock market ticker tape to life as it is lived by the hundreds of millions of people in America and the billions of others around the world is truly a challenging and much needed task. What does it mean for a country to be rich, if it is built on something that can give way in a day, that relies so much on the confidence of others in order to exist, and deprives so many of their basic human rights? The clearest and harshest explanation I have found is in Marilyn Waring’s 1987 text If Women Counted. I heartily recommend.