Steven C. Pitts and William E. Spriggs, co-authors of Beyond the Mountaintop: King’s Prescription for Poverty, connect the dots between real compassion and economic policy in the Philadelphia Inquirer:
Some might be tempted to reflect on the 40th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. by focusing on his dream of racial harmony. To appropriately mark this moment is to enter a bigger circle encompassing King’s living legacy of economic justice, a crusade against poverty, that was his final and most enduring campaign.
King saw poverty as the result of economic policy, not social pathology. “True compassion is more than flipping a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring,” he said.
Filed under: minimum wage, state economy, work and family, economy, public policy, work
