Whatever one says about the 1960s, a decade characterized by cultural and political change, it must also be said that it was a decade when leadership was willing to publicly address poverty. President Lyndon Johnson introduced legislation at his 1964 State of the Union address, which was given the unofficial title, "The war on poverty." Sen. Robert Kennedy, touring the country during his 1968 presidential campaign, highlighted the inequities between rich and poor in our society. In that same year, Martin Luther King, preparing for the "Poor People's Campaign," was gunned down in Memphis while advocating for the rights of sanitation workers. Since then, poverty, at least on a large scale, has not been an issue that has garnered much national attention.
But it is that 1960s tradition that caused award-winning broadcaster Tavis Smiley and Princeton Professor Cornel West to embark on a 16-city bus tour highlighting the plight of poor Americans. The multifaceted tour will take Smiley and West from a Native American reservation to a food desert, which is an area where healthy and affordable food is difficult to obtain. It will include spending a night with a low-income family in Columbus, Miss., and sleeping in a homeless shelter in Washington D.C.
Hearing from a cross-section of America, West and Smiley seek to put a face on something that is euphemistically described in our public discourse with focus-group tested slogans. "The fact is the poor in this country are being rendered more and more invisible every day," Smiley said. "We made the announcement of the poverty tour in advance of this wretched debt-ceiling legislation, which for me is nothing more than a declaration of war on the poor," he added. "We're trying to keep alive that spirit of Martin Luther King. Jr.," West said. "With greed at the top, escalating wealth, inequality, oligarchs and plutocrats shaping the nation in their own interest and their own image, they cast poor and working people aside."
Recently, the Pew Research Center released a report that found the median wealth of white households is 20 times more than black households and 18 times more than of Hispanic households. Much has been made about this report, I suspect, because it places emphasis on the fault line of race.
But does the report reveal anything we don't already know or suspect? Each year, it seems there are new findings that reveal the income gap between the richest Americans and the poorest is widening, irrespective of race. The Department of Agriculture recently reported nearly 15 percent of the U.S. population relied on food stamps in May.
But the Smiley and West poverty tour does more than keep the spirit of King alive by its emphasis on poverty. Several of its stops are vivid reminders of pivotal moments in King's illustrious career.
A town-hall meeting in Memphis will be held at the Lorraine Motel, where King was assassinated, and town hall meetings scheduled in Chicago and Detroit also bear witness to the King legacy.
It was King's visit to Chicago in 1966 that helped expand his perspective on civil rights to include economic injustice. On June 23, 1963, after leading a march through Detroit, King gave a speech at Cobo Hall where his remarks to the crowd concluded with the articulation of his "dream."Since 1968, others have conducted poverty tours, including Richard Nixon, Ted Kennedy, Bill Clinton, Paul Wellstone and Jesse Jackson. But it has been 43 years since the conversation about poverty was held on a national level.
It was Robert Kennedy who stated in 1968: "The future does not belong to those who are content with today, apathetic toward common problems and their fellow man alike. Rather it will belong to those who can blend vision, reason and courage in a personal commitment to the ideals and great enterprises of American society."
Kennedy's words capture the essence of this current poverty tour. I hope that Smiley and West are able to create some much-needed discomfort, which is the prerequisite for change. Poverty can be easily forgotten in the midst of a political climate dominated by vacuous and cowardly leadership.
The face of poverty must be seen as it truly is and not as we wish it to be so that we can remain in our personal comfort zone. Poverty must be seen as the growing, equal-opportunity employer that is not bound by race, geography, religion, gender or orientation.