DR. KING'S DREAM AND HURRICANE KATRINA

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, it's all too clear we have yet to
fulfill Dr. King's dream of a society that ensures equality for everyone
in this country.

Displaced Katrina survivors desperately want to return to their
neighborhoods and homes. That can't happen without the federal
government ensuring they'll get access to affordable, decent housing;
well paying jobs; services like electricity, clean water, and health care;
and a voice in determining how their cities are rebuilt. But when it
comes to helping the Gulf Coast's low-income communities of color,
every level of pattern of inaction and delay they exhibited when
Katrina first struck.

Meanwhile, the immoral war in Iraq drags on, though a majority of
people think we should get out soon. More than 2,200 U.S. military
personnel and over 100,000 Iraqis have died. More than $200 Billion
of our tax dollars have already been spent on this war, and the price
tag could end up over $2 trillion, draining resources needed to fund
jobs, education, and health care. On top of this, the Bush
administration undercuts our rights more and more through illegal
surveillance of US Citizens, among other egregious acts.

We have been here before. Forty years ago, another president
convinced Congress to give him a blank check to wage a war
without limit. The result was Vietnam: 58,000 young Americans
and more than three million Vietnamese dead; a society broken
and scarred; and illegal assaults on our civil liberties.

In April 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke out against the
Vietnam War at New York's Riverside Church. At the time some
said King was meddling where he had no business. But knowing
that racism and war go hand in hand, Dr. King could not be silent.
Today, in 2006, his words still ring true:

"I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or
energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as Vietnam continued
to draw men and skills and money like some demonic, destructive
suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an
enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.

"It became clear to me that the war was doing far more than
devastating the hopes of the poor at home We were taking the
young black men who had been crippled in our society and sending
them 8000 miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which
they had not found in Southwest Georgia and East Harlem.

"I knew I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the
oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the
greatest purveyor of violence in the world todaymy own government.

"[W]e as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. When
machines and computers, profit and property rights are considered
more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism,
and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on
military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching
spiritual death."

Thirty-eight years later, Dr. King's challenge to us is as powerful as
when he first spoke these words. Our country can make a change, a
turn towards humanity and law and decency. Or we can continue
down the road of deepening racial injustice and permanent war. It's
time for our government to turn to the values of Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr.

ACTION
Contact your congressperson and senators and communicate these
two simple messages:
1. bring all the troops home now.
2. fund the rebuilding of all Gulf Coast neighborhoods.

Go to the following site http://www.congress.org/congressorg/dbq/officials/
and enter your Zip code for contact info.