[Chat] What a way to spend MLK Day!

[WeinsteinM at aol.com]

Bravo Ralph!   


http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/baltimore_city/bal-te.md.king21jan21,0,6033054.story?coll=bal_tab01_layout

Martin Luther King Jr. Day 
Chasing the dream, 1 new job at a time
 Career fair echoes his pursuit of economic justice


Caption: Ralph E. Moore Jr. used the inspiration of the Rev. Martin Luther 
King's economic justice campaign to begin an annual job fair that has grown 
every year since it began in 2002. (Sun photo by Jed Kirschbaum / January 18, 
2008)
By Kelly Brewington | Sun reporter
 January 21, 2008

 "The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort 
and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. 
The true neighbor will risk his position, his prestige, and even his life for 
the welfare of others. In dangerous valleys and hazardous pathways, he will lift 
some bruised and beaten brother to a higher and more noble life." -- The Rev. 
Martin Luther King Jr.

Pasted to Ralph E. Moore Jr.'s door at St. Frances Academy Community Center 
is a poignant quote from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. It's not about having 
a dream, and it says nothing about the content of one's character.

Rather, the passage comes from King's 1963 "Strength to Love" speech, which 
stresses the need to uplift those who are less fortunate.

It's been the foundation of Moore's anti-poverty activism for more than two 
decades. It also serves as inspiration for an annual job fair and skills 
training event that the Baltimore community center hosts every year on Martin Luther 
King Jr. Day.

Today, amid parades, volunteer efforts and lectures planned to commemorate 
the observance of King's birthday - he would have been 79 - scholars, civil 
rights pioneers and activists such as Moore are urging people to remember King, 
the champion for economic justice.

Less celebrated than his epic 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech, the Montgomery 
bus boycott or his oratory gifts is King's anti-poverty crusade.

"People don't recall that the March on Washington was actually called the 
march for jobs and freedom," said Moore, 55. "When he died, he was working for 
economic justice issues. He was actively organizing a strong coalition of a 
variety of races to focus on the poverty issue."

One need look no farther than Baltimore for evidence that poverty and the 
social ills associated with it remain 40 years since King's death, Moore said. 
Nearly 20 percent of Baltimore's population lives in poverty, the U.S. Census 
found in 2006. And an estimated 227,700 Baltimoreans 16 and older are unemployed 
or not in the workforce, according to the city's Job Opportunities Task 
Force.

Six years ago, Moore, who grew up in Baltimore's Sandtown community, began 
tying King's anti-poverty message to the small job fair. The first event 
attracted a few dozen employers, but the demand from job seekers was huge. Nearly 300 
people showed up. It was the first time a formal job fair had come to 
Johnston Square, this economically depressed neighborhood just east of Mount Vernon, 
Moore said.

This year, several hundred people have registered for the event, which will 
feature workshops on resume writing and interview skills in addition to 
recruiting. And unlike many similar events, this one encourages job seekers to stay 
in touch with organizers. The first 10 people who contact Moore on or after 
April 4 - the anniversary of the date King was assassinated - will receive $100, 
if they can prove they have retained the job they got at the fair.

"It's not a lot, but we want to make sure people connect to jobs," said 
Moore, who previously served as vice president of the now-defunct Center for 
Poverty Solutions. "We are dealing with a tougher population, people with criminal 
records, and there are a lot of discouraged workers because of this."

Moore estimates that about 85 percent of the people attracted to the event 
have arrest records, which remains a huge barrier to employment. But it is 
precisely the population that most needs employment, he said. Job fair organizers 
reached out to employers who are willing to hire people with criminal records.

"These are the folks who are forgotten; this is the invisible population," he 
said. "But these are people who want to do more and better their lives."

Waged in the final year of his life, King's campaign for full employment was 
controversial, unpopular among some of his activist peers and risky. 
Culminating in the Poor People's Campaign of 1968, King planned for "a multiracial army 
of the poor" to descend on Washington in a nonviolent protest urging Congress 
to sign a poor people's bill of rights. He called it the second phase of the 
civil rights struggle.

"He said it over and over again - racism, poverty and war are the triple 
evils," said Thomas F. Jackson, a history professor at the University of North 
Carolina at Greensboro and author of From Civil Rights to Human Rights: Martin 
Luther King Jr. and the Struggle for Economic Justice. "And racism is bound up 
with poverty. You could not combat one without combating the other."

But the campaign sputtered. King infuriated President Lyndon B. Johnson in 
1967 when he criticized the Vietnam War as an "enemy of the poor." Civil rights 
leaders complained the movement was too ambitious and unstructured. And with 
demands for a massive government jobs program, others saw King as too radical.

King died organizing the campaign. In May 1968, marchers staged sit-ins on 
the Mall in Washington, but attendance was small.

"In the eyes of the press and the nation, it was a failure, but for the 
participants and the organizers, it was part of the process of learning," Jackson 
said. "It put the human face of poverty at the forefront."

The Rev. Marion C. Bascom, retired pastor of Baltimore's Douglas Memorial 
Community Church and a confidant of King's, allowed Poor People's Campaign 
marchers to take refuge at his church en route to Washington.

"It was terribly important," he said. "My reaction then and now would be 
hallelujah. I read in the paper [Friday] we are trying to combat homelessness. We 
are trying to deal with it now. Well, it's too late."

Those who paid little attention to King's legacy of economic justice must 
reconsider it, he said.

"He had the power to articulate the tragedy that runs rampant and he said it 
with such force, such power and with such intellectual excellence that not 
even a bigot could argue with it," Bascom said. "We are still being called on to 
do what he did."

It's a message that Moore hopes to get out in the job fair: We're all in this 
together.

"I don't think King would want a parade done in his honor, although I 
appreciate the people who want to honor him in that way," Moore said. "I think he 
would want someone to march somewhere, to do something."


**************
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