Honoring Dr. King in the economic stimulus bill

A way for Congress to provide economic stimulus that is green and just 11

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Forty years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was in Memphis, 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.

Billy Parish is co-founder and coordinator of the Energy Action Coalition. Billy has taken four years off from Yale, where he was co-chair of the Yale Student Environmental Coalition and was majoring in Ethics, Politics & Economics. Billy was a 2004 Brower Youth Award Winner, 2005 Rolling Stone “Climate Hero,” Mother Jones magazine’s 2006 “Student Activist of the Year,” and was recently named a fellow by Ashoka, the global association of the world’s leading social entrepreneurs. A co-author of the report “New Energy for Campuses,” a guide for colleges and universities on how to cost-effectively cut their greenhouse gas emissions, Billy works to train students and equip them with the tools they need to implement local climate solutions. A native of New York City, Billy now works out of the Washington D.C. office of the Energy Action Coalition.

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  1. Jon Rynn's avatar

    Jon Rynn Posted 6:40 am
    21 Jan 2008

    Some words from Dr. King.

    I thought I would take the opportunity to post some of Dr. King's speech that he made April 4, 1967, at the Riverside Church in New York City, because I think that they are relevant today.  When he talks about war in the speech, I think we can easily substitute war and environmental destruction, as in this line:

    Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war.

    The next sentence is also very relevant in these times of economic and environmental uncertainty:

    Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.

    The speech is often referred to as "breaking the silence", taken from the next section:

    And some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak.
    .

    Finally, I want to quote from the next lines, which inspire hope:

    And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.

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  2. caniscandida Posted 7:10 am
    21 Jan 2008

    God bless America!

    This is a wonderful post.  And thanks, Jon, for the excellent quotes from the address by MLK at the Riverside Church.

    Here, in the same tradition, is a fine piece by NYTimes columnist Bob Herbert:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/19/opinion/19herbert.html

    Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.

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  3. Jon Rynn's avatar

    Jon Rynn Posted 7:27 am
    21 Jan 2008

    Yes, cc, that was a great Herbert piece

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  4. odograph Posted 7:31 am
    21 Jan 2008

    Stimulus

    I grant that a stimulus might be necessary, a lesser evil, but this article explains the spot we are in:

    t's important to note, though, that the Bush administration has had a fiscal stimulus package of sorts in place ever since the middle of 2001. That's when the federal government started spending more than it takes in. Just to review the deficits of the past six years:

    FY 2002 [..]: $157.8 billion (1.5% of GDP)
    FY 2003: $377.6 billion (3.5% of GDP)
    FY 2004: $412.7 billion (3.6% of GDP)
    FY 2005: $318.3 billion (2.6% of GDP)
    FY 2006: $248.2 billion (1.9% of GDP)
    FY 2007: $161 billion (est.) (1.2% of GDP)

    It would be nicer if we were "starting" this stimulus from a less debt-ridden state.

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  5. WWAGD?!'s avatar

    WWAGD?! Posted 7:34 am
    21 Jan 2008

    Some folks like the tax cuts


    Uh.

    Well, maybe you should ask the founder of BET how he feels about tax cuts for the rich...before you go rushing around putting them down.

    http://www.businessweek.com/mediacenter/video/careers/FEE ...

    Nov. 4 - Since selling BET to Viacom for $3.3 billion in 2001, Robert Johnson has diversified his business interests and acquired hotels, basketball teams, and banks.

    Or, you could ask Oprah

    http://www.forbes.com/lists/2005/54/O0ZT.html

    Net Worth: $1.4 billion

    The list goes on and on...but you wouldn't know that since you haven't been paying attention since 1970...

    Viva la Climate Resistance!

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  6. David Roberts's avatar

    David Roberts Posted 8:37 am
    21 Jan 2008

    See also:

    This great letter in the NYT.

    grist.org

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  7. odograph Posted 8:53 am
    21 Jan 2008

    public works

    The problem with public works projects is that they tend to live on.  After all, we agree that they have merit outside stimulus.

    The trick with stimulus is doing something abrupt, something that will jolt the economy, without building in more "structural debt" in future years.

    Bush's brief plea to extend his tax cuts failed this test, which is why Bernanke spoke up, and put they kibosh on that.  Bush built too much structural debt, and that might actually be a reason to fear that stimulus will even work.  It comes AFTER a long span of cheap money and deficit spending.

    Basically I approve of public works to improve ecology and sustainability, but they have to be done as part of a good long term budget.

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  8. Colin Wright Posted 10:30 am
    21 Jan 2008

    A green stimulus can be long-term valuable...

    Accorrding to Dean Baker, Bush is caught between a rock and a hard place. He despises handouts to the poor and middle-class, but he is worried about his legacy (a failed economic as well as foreign policy). Thus, the Democrats are in a good place to forward their agenda. Given the extended energy crunch we are in, they would do well to follow Baker's recommendations here:

      Congress can also insist that a portion of the stimulus be "green," providing a down payment on reductions of greenhouse gas emissions. A generous tax credit (30-40 percent) for increased home insulation or other conservation measures would be the quickest green way to pump money in the economy. Given the collapse of residential construction, this would be a well-targeted measure.

        Congress can also allocate additional funds to public transit systems in exchange for specific commitments to reduce fares. This would effectively provide a tax rebate for public transit users. This would stimulate the economy by putting money in the pockets of transit users, but it could also have long-term benefits if temporary fare reductions lure more riders, and some of them change their travel habits permanently.

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  9. odograph Posted 10:58 am
    21 Jan 2008

    6-9 months

    That's how long it should take to complete and close a stimulus plan.

    (Assuming of course that this is merely a recession.)

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  10. Tom Athanasiou's avatar

    Tom Athanasiou Posted 11:37 pm
    21 Jan 2008

    Yes, yes, yes...

    And don't forget to draw the larger conclusion as well, one that should be, but is not, obvious -- the urgent condition of rich/poor politics in the US will make it quite impossible for us, as a nation, to rise to the climate challenge unless progressive (as in "progressive taxation") approaches come to take center stage.  

    -- toma

    Tom Athanasiou toma@ecoequity.org

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  11. amazingdrx Posted 12:01 am
    22 Jan 2008

    Oil dropping

    Now if we had a real government, gasoline prices at the pump would come down with it.  That would bail the economy out.

    But we have oil company and OPEC lobbyists, bush/cheney in charge.  Oil stocks are plunging.  Bushco won't act to force monopolists to lower gas prices.

    It won't matter what kind of stimulus for big oil and tax breaks for multimillionaiers bushco passes through the rubber stamp congress now.  BTW, anyone on a pension or social security, the fed just took cash to bail out megabankers that enable hedge fund thievery  right out of your survival money.

    Finally duuhbya faithfulls are getting some punishment for their moronic stupidity.  But everyone else will suffer along with them.  Except the hedge fundies shorting this disaster.

    And now regulation is almost impossible.  Any hint of that and the people holding the mortgage on US all, foreclose.  Period.  The smart money is already squirreled away in Swiss banks.

    This is what it looks like when "free" markets rule, get used to it.  Hoovervilles will be called Bushbergs during this depression?  The fed can't lower interest rates beyond zero.  

    The closer they get to zero, the less effect anything they do will have.  "Free" market freefall.  You liked that corporatarian propaganda, it sounds so good.  Let the private sector do it.  Well they are doing it alright.  How does it feel?  

    http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

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