January 9, 2015 at 1:37 p.m.
Goldsmith to address escalating inequality on MLK Jr. Day of Service
Goldsmith to address escalating inequality on MLK Jr. Day of Service
By By Cheryl Hanson-
In the Northwoods, the occasion will be observed with an event organized by the Northwoods Unitarian Universalist Fellowship (NUUF).
Judy Goldsmith, social activist, past president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), and retired Dean of UW-Fond du Lac and Campus Executive Officer, will speak at St. Augustine Episcopal Church, located at 39 S. Pelham St. in Rhinelander, at 1 p.m. She will speak again at the Woodruff Community Center, located on Highway 47 North, at 6 p.m.
Both presentations are free to the public.
Her talk, entitled "Red, White, and Broke: Escalating Inequality in America," will address Dr. King's views on economic injustice. She will focus on the growing income gap in this country and how it affects everyone.
Ms. Goldsmith marched with Dr. King's widow, Coretta Scott-King, against apartheid and for the 20th anniversary of the March on Washington.
That influential relationship continues to be Goldsmith's guiding inspiration as she fights against poverty and for equality.
Diane Reupert, chair of the NUUF Social Justice Committee, sees Goldsmith and Dr. King as kindred spirits - individuals who made it their life's mission to work for social change.
Goldsmith has a long history of social activism on the national scene. Throughout her career, she championed the cause of gender equality. It was under her leadership, from 1982-'85, that NOW successfully campaigned to increase the number of women serving in state legislatures.
Reflecting on her own years as a member of the Northwoods Chapter of NOW, Reupert said, "I always thought she [Goldsmith] was so brave. It was a very difficult period of time in the women's movement, a time of constant opposition. Of all the people who inspired me, Judy stands out. She is amazing!"
Currently, Goldsmith is involved with Move to Amend, an initiative calling for a constitutional amendment to end corporate personhood. "The interests of the poor, the unemployed, the overworked are not interests of the corporate world," said Goldsmith.
While Dr. King is most often associated with the nonviolent movement for racial equality, he was also a tireless advocate for economic justice for all. As early as 1958, in his essay My Pilgrimage to Nonviolence, he wrote "that the inseparable twin of racial injustice was economic injustice."
As a teenager, working for two summers "in a plant that hired both Negroes and whites," Dr. King explained, he "saw economic injustice firsthand, and realized that the poor white was exploited just as much as the Negro."
As the nation celebrates the life of Dr. King, what is often lost in the passage of time is the controversial nature of his ministry - not just among separatist southerners - and the moral courage it took to stay true to his deeply held values.
A year before his assassination, Dr. King delivered a speech at Riverside Church in New York, opposing the war in Vietnam. "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death," he said.
His vocal opposition to the war angered President Lyndon Johnson and many civil rights activists, costing Dr. King support and tarnishing his reputation.
Still, he pressed forward.
In his later years, Dr. King focused his energy on building The Poor People's Campaign, a movement to confront the economic injustice in housing, wages, and employment that he observed all around him.
In 1959, more than half of all black families (54.9 percent) lived in poverty.
When Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis in 1968, he was in the city for the third time, supporting a strike by African-American sanitation workers, who had walked off the job after two men had been crushed to death by a garbage truck's compactor. Twelve days after his assassination, the strike was settled, the union recognized, and the strikers' pay grudgingly raised by 10 cents an hour.
While statistics indicate the situation has improved since Dr. King's time, his dream of racial and economic justice remains unrealized. According to a 2012 report by the U.S. Census Bureau, 24.2 percent of black families still live in poverty.
Given the nation's current political climate, many of Dr. King's ideas are more controversial today than when they were originally proposed.
He advocated for a guaranteed basic income for everyone. He believed that every employable citizen should also be guaranteed a job, even if it meant those jobs were created by the government as public works projects.
He also held that one of the keys to economic justice was the building of a strong labor movement.
In 1965, he spoke before the Illinois State AFL-CIO.
"The labor movement was the principal force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress," he said. "Out of its bold struggles, economic and social reform gave birth to unemployment insurance, old-age pensions, government relief for the destitute, and, above all, new wage levels that meant not mere survival but a tolerable life."
Today, as politicians feud over increasing the minimum wage, cut food stamp funding, and erode union bargaining rights, Reupert believes that it is more important than ever to remember King's legacy.
"We began celebrating MLK Day about 11 years ago because we recognized that no one else in the northern part of the state was honoring this great man and what he tried to achieve for those who had no voice," Reupert said. "His message is still relevant today."
In addition to the Northwoods Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, cosponsors of the Jan. 19 event include: St. Augustine's Episcopal Church, Rhinelander; St. Francis Project of St. Matthias Episcopal Church, Minocqua; Many Ways of Peace, Eagle River; League of Women Voters of the Northwoods; American Association of University Women Northwoods Branch; First Congregational United Church of Christ, Rhinelander; and the North Central Labor Coalition.
For further information, contact Reupert at (715) 282-5400.
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