Fighting for the Dream of Economic Justice: Interview by Shaun King
The Takeaway
PRI & WNYC
January 15, 2018
It has been 50 years since the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. began his major push for economic justice.
Dr. King’s 1968 “Poor People’s Campaign” was a call for underprivileged people around the country to rise up and demand better jobs, wages, education and more. Dr. King touched on issues of poverty during a speech, on April 3, 1968, the day before he was assassinated. At a church in Memphis, Tennessee, he spoke in support of sanitation workers in the city who were on strike in protest against low wages and unfair working conditions.
Now, half a century later, there’s a new effort underway to renew Dr. King’s campaign against poverty.
On this holiday honoring the late civil rights icon, Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, co-director of the Kairos Center and co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, discusses the new poverty campaign.
Shaun King, a columnist at The Intercept and a social justice activist, reflects on the movement in the wake of the recent accusations against President Trump for allegedly using insulting language about Haiti and African countries.