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Sunday, October 19, 2008
DAYTON — While presidential candidates promote agendas targeting relief for middle class Americans, leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference fear the poor are being left behind.
Members of the SCLC national board met in Dayton on Sunday, Oct. 19, at the Crowne Plaza Hotel to begin chiseling out a legislative agenda to champion the poor.
"The talk during the presidential campaign has been all about the wealthy and the middle class, but nobody is talking about the needs of the poor," said Charles Steele, Jr., president and CEO of the SCLC. "We need someone to advocate on behalf of the poor."
The sons of two prominent civil rights leaders, Martin Luther King III and Jonathan Luther Jackson, son of Jesse Jackson, were among the group meeting here to examine how the poor are impacted by the struggling national economy.
Jackson said, ideally, 40 years after the 1968 death of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Americans should be celebrating new levels of home ownership instead of facing foreclosures.
"There is no product called 'sub prime' at the bank, so people don't understand who has one," Jackson said. "Our financial institutions have a sharecropping appetite. They take more because they can."
All too often, minorities with good credit scores are deemed unqualified for conventional loans, he said.
Jackson predicts home foreclosures will be followed by school and church foreclosures.
As the historical presidential election nears, King cautioned the group that racism will not disappear even if Sen. Barack Obama is elected the first black president of the United States.
"That certainly means America has made a monumental step. America may embrace this individual in this contest. That doesn't mean that America has chosen to embrace us," King said.
King's organization Realizing the Dream will hold a national summit in Washington D. C. on Tuesday, Oct. 23 bringing together scholars, community activists, business leaders and lawmakers to discuss actions that should be under taken to win the war against poverty.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2362 or josmith@DaytonDaily
News.com.
