Toward the Beloved Community

THE FELLOWSHIP OF RECONCILIATION'S STATEMENT ON
RACIAL & ECONOMIC JUSTICE

All artwork by
Rini Templeton Humanity today faces an enormous challenge: bringing about racial and economic justice. Throughout the world, official claims of prosperity and economic well-being are contradicted by the increasing income insecurity with which the majority of people must contend. Institutional racism is still the norm, systematically deferring the hopes of millions who aspire to participate fully and equally in all facets of social life. People of faith and conscience must build movements which effectively challenge the legitimacy of such an economic and racial order. Nonviolent activists must propose changes which address the roots of the problems, help to dismantle the oppressive systems and bring us closer to fulfilling Dr. King's vision of the Beloved Community.

A Dire Global Situation
Let us be dissatisfied until rat-infested slums will be a thing of a dark past and every family will have a decent sanitary house in which to live....Let us be dissatisfied until our brothers of the Third World-Asia, Africa and Latin America-will no longer be the victim of imperialist exploitation, but will be lifted from the long night of poverty, illiteracy and disease. 1
         --Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Unfair economic policies inflict cruel, even subhuman, conditions upon millions of people throughout the world. According to the United Nations, at least 40,000 people, mostly children, die of starvation every day... at least 20 million a year. Much of the suffering is the effect of economic decisions made by the Group of Eight powers (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the UK and the US). The poor in Third World societies endure punishing "structural adjustments" imposed on them by the First World lending agencies. These policies involve cuts in wages, loss of social protection, and result in lowered standards of living. Countries such as Brazil, Mexico, and Indonesia find themselves shackled to payment of enormous international loan debts. Much touted neo-liberal economic policies and economic "shock treatment" have led to major economic crises in Russia, while slave labor re-appears in China. Super-exploitation of workers takes place in so-called free trade zones in Central America and Asia. Entire regions in Africa face unrelieved hardship due to the draining of their resources throughout the past two centuries. Predatory, corrupt and rapacious elites in these societies have done their part to contribute to this over-all panorama of misery. Under- or unevenly-developed societies are locked into dependent relationships with the "overdeveloped" regions. The 1997 UN Human Development Report states, "The three richest people in the world have assets that exceed the combined gross domestic product of the 48 least developed countries." There is increasing concern amongst economic specialists of a coming global stock market slump with ever-worsening social effects.

As the consuming nations opt for continued unbridled sprawl instead of sustainable growth, the negative environmental impact of over-development is evidenced in phenomena such as climactic changes due to global warming. No major industrialized society is acting economically, socially, or environmentally in the spirit of Native American and other indigenous groups throughout the world who weigh the impact which their actions will have upon the earth several generations into the future.

The Situation at Home
On the cusp of the twenty-first century, the mainstream media trumpet the news that the US economy is doing well and that we are enjoying continued growth, low unemployment, and unparalleled material abundance. Yet, several harsh realities lie hidden beneath the glowing announcements. The poor, the unemployed, working families, and those who have slipped from one rung to the next below, face a tough situation:

Hunger: 30 million people in the US are unable to buy food for themselves and their families for some part of each month; 12 million (40%) of these are children under 18. 2

Homelessness: 5 to 7 million people in the US are homeless. 3

Health: In 1996, approximately 41.7 million people in the US had no health insurance; another 40 million Americans had only limited coverage. 4

Poverty: 1 of 4 children lives in poverty. 5

The Great "Racial" Divide: 33.1% of all African-Americans, 30.6% of Latinos, and 18.8% of other non-whites live in poverty, as compared to 9.9% of white residents. 6

The Growing Gap in Wealth: The combined wealth of the top 1 percent of U.S. families is about the same as that of the entire bottom 95 percent. 7

Military Spending: $260 billion went to military costs last year. 8 This equals $740 million which could go into civilian projects every day.

Our Grassroots History
In order to understand the roots of present social conditions, it is helpful to retrieve the historical accounts of oppression and resistance which are often overlooked by mainstream thinking.

The initial expansion and later tremendous growth of the United States as a nation was tragically undergirded by genocide, racism, slavery, and land theft. White European settlers' westward movement meant the physical destruction of the original peoples and occupation of former Indigenous lands. The practices used against Native Americans in the seizing of prime land could best be described as a policy of extermination.

Slave labor and post-Civil War Black labor were the engine for Southern agricultural and national industrial bounty. After the official abolition of slavery, a two-tier system of wages akin to South Africa's apartheid was established, in which different wages were paid to white and black workers for the same work. This system became the basis for the continued growth of much of the manufacturing industry in the United States.

The two-wage system was also imposed upon Mexicans in the Southwest after half of Mexico's territory was stolen through war conquest and occupation. The US acquired Hawaii, the Panama isthmus, the Philippines and Puerto Rico in neo-colonial land grabs using military force. The importation of Chinese, Filipino, and Japanese labor for mining, railroads, and agriculture proved indispensable for US infrastructure development.

A major obstacle to peace and justice is racism. The ideology of White supremacy, a belief in the supposed innate superiority of European-Americans over people of color, is deeply embedded and expressed in all economic, political, and cultural institutions, and has impeded the flowering of a new type of society based on diversity and equality.

There have been many efforts made at organizing the oppressed in the US across ethnic lines. For example, in the early part of this century in Washington state and California, the Industrial Workers of the World successfully unified White, Black, and Chicano workers in the quest to form "One Big Union" which would uplift labor. Likewise, in the 1930s and 1940s, the Southern Tenant Farmers Union attempted to bring together poor White and Black sharecroppers against exploitative landowners.

The Civil Rights movement of the 1950s-60s was a direct and powerful challenge to segregation by African-Americans and their White allies; other ethnic groups have resisted exclusion and oppression in movements of their own. These causes took dramatic strides in making notions of privilege less tolerable, but were not able to overcome oppression itself and replace it with a new egalitarian order.

The modern system of profits has also supported male rule, or patriarchy. While large numbers of women have always been part of the work force, they have also always faced a situation of unequal wages and occupational discrimination. Women have resisted that status, often paying with their lives. For instance, in the Triangle Shirt Waist fire of 1911, during a strike for better conditions, 146 young seamstresses died when they were physically barred from escaping the burning building.

The last three decades have seen the "feminization of poverty": increasingly, single parent households are headed by women. Domestic labor, performed by women who work both outside and within the home, is also not recognized for its contribution to the economy.

Social Justice and Power: Responses from Society
Many of the U.S. grassroots movements of this century forced various government administrations to put forth programs which address economic insecurity and inequity. Franklin Delano Roosevelt's reform programs such as Social Security, the National Labor Relations Act, and his 1944 proposed "Economic Bill of Rights" were a response to the enormous suffering, unrest, and labor organizing spurred on by the economic collapse known as the Great Depression. And in 1948, the UN adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which outlined basic material and social rights for every human being.

In the 1960s, the Kennedy administration's "New Frontier" initiative began to address the poverty described by Michael Harrington's book, The Other America, while Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society-War on Poverty" was an ameliorative response to the groundswell of protests. There were numerous movements of "people power" throughout the decade, from the 1963 March on Washington to the summer 1968 Poor People's March, heeding Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s clarion call for a radical restructuring of the economy and a final end to institutional racism. Other new constituencies arose such as the United Farmworkers union which sustained strikes and boycotts for better conditions; and New York's Stonewall Rebellion of 1969, when gays took to the streets in response to homophobic police brutality.

The women's movement in the 1970s highlighted discrimination against women at home, in the workplace, and throughout society, and pushed open doors long closed to women. In 1978 a rally of 800,000 supporters calling for ratification of the Equal Right Amendment gathered in Washington, DC. These movements changed the consciousness of the society and brought about changes which improved the lives of millions.

Since the Reagan-Bush years, beginning symbolically with the government breaking of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers strike in 1981, many of the rights won in the past have come under attack. A backlash against labor, minorities, women, gays, the working poor, and immigrants has largely continued unabated.

Under the Clinton Democrats, the social contract of the Roosevelt era has been nearly abandoned, finding expression in the passage of "welfare to workfare" laws (1996), i.e. the elimination of public assistance to poor families with children, increased homelessness, anti-immigrant measures, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA, 1994) which means the loss of domestic jobs, promotion of economic globalization (General Agreement of Trade and Tariffs, 1995, and the proposed Multilateral Agreement on Investment, 1999). Downsizing, privatization, and concentrations of extreme wealth are in full force; in 1997 the average US CEO made 115 times the salary of the average worker. 9

Reclaiming Dr. King's Vision of the Beloved Community
More than thirty years ago, the Civil Rights movement, led by African Americans but involving people from all ethnicities, social backgrounds and walks of life, brought the burning issue of racial segregation to the very centers of political power. In August of 1963, thousands gathered with Martin Luther King in a massive March on Washington calling for an end to Jim Crow.

King identified racism as one of the pillars of societal oppression, along with economic injustice and militarism. Fully aware of the controversy it would provoke, he broke ranks with more conservative Movement leaders in 1967 by coming out against US participation in the Vietnam War and against the prioritization of defense spending. He forthrightly linked the plight of the oppressed abroad with those marginalized and victimized domestically. Increasingly, his speeches decried the US's deeply rooted income disparities.

Personifying liberation theology, King embraced a preferential option for the poor, for working people, for the have-nots, regardless of skin color or nationality. As the natural expression of his broadening political vision, he chose to go to Memphis in April 1968 as witness and supporter of the plight of striking sanitation workers. Prompted by the militant actions of a new generation of Black youth, King moved beyond sitting-in for civil rights to promoting universal human rights, from advocating gradualist reform to calling for nonviolent revolution. Impatient with lofty words which did not manifest themselves in concrete changes, at the end of his life King called for drastic transformation of the social structure. In this regard he joined the circle of other spiritually guided political visionaries such as M.K. Gandhi, A. J. Muste, Dorothy Day.

King's ideas went beyond the limited objective of establishing legal enforcement of equality; his vision of the future was a call for a far-reaching reconstitution of human interactions. His long-term perspective called for creating the conditions for interrelatedness and mutuality. He envisioned a diverse humanity from all walks of life joined together in a common circle of solidarity, a "world wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class and nation...in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all men (sic)." 10

Writers Kenneth Smith and Ira Zepp, Jr. see Dr. King's life work reaching towards the higher goal of the "Beloved Community". Smith and Zepp consider this concept to be "the capstone of King's thought. The vision of the Beloved Community was the organizing principle of all of King's thought and activity. His writings and his involvement in the civil rights movement were illustrations of and footnotes to his fundamental preoccupation with the actualization of an inclusive human community." 11

But what could the Beloved Community look like?
"Synonymous with the Kingdom of God, the Beloved Community is a completely integrated and inclusive global community characterized by compassion and justice. The Beloved Community makes manifest the interrelatedness of human existence. Such a community will be free not only of racism and the many forms of physical violence (child abuse, domestic violence, sexual assault, police brutality, and war), but also of economic injustice and exploitation." 12

Informed by this "organizing principle", King proposed radical and revolutionary methods; movement strategy and tactics called for massive nonviolent civil disobedience in order to challenge unjust power and bring about profound structural changes.

Today, with the yawning gap between the impoverished many and the wealthy few, the spiritual emptiness of the culture of materialism and excessive power, and the unceasing cycles of ethnic vendettas, and wars, Dr. King's vision is more relevant than ever.

Questioning the Way Things Are
[T]he movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society. There are 40 million poor people here. And one day we must ask the question, 'Why are there 40 million poor people in America?' And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy.
         ---Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 13

While many people lack basic necessities for life, a small minority enjoys great economic wealth. Yet the widespread greed and consumption of our culture are symptomatic of a deep social illness: many folks are trying to fill the emptiness of their lives with pleasure, property and power when only kindness, compassion and service to others can fulfill us. Dr. King identified materialism, violence and racism as the "giant triplets," American values destroying our nation. His vision of a beloved community draws us to compassion, nonviolence and inclusion.

Social justice movements, while rightly scrutinizing Pentagon expenditures, hesitate in challenging the core values of private ownership and possessive individualism. Change is viewed solely within the context and the logic of the present economic rules. Yet, is a system which puts profits before people a life-sustaining system, or is it ultimately at odds with the integrity of human beings and the well-being of the planet?

The question before all of us remains: is our present economic system compatible with justice?

The market system promotes extreme income differences, social inequality, and separateness, and perpetuates age-old hierarchical distinctions even though all are supposedly "created equal." Income disparities reinforce divisions along ethnic, gender, and age lines (people of color, women, and youth and the elderly are generally poorer).

Because the rules underlying capitalism compel us to put a price on everything, including work, decisions are made primarily on the basis of what brings the greatest profit. This economic process devalues people, who are judged only by their ability to produce or buy, and viewed as appendages to the work/consumption machine.

Consumerism, personal accumulation of wealth, and privatism are the driving values of modern society. The culture built upon the profit system pushes aside values of community, connectedness, empathy. Our values have become distorted and twisted: material accumulation is taken as the ultimate goal, rather than as a means of building a world community.

More and more full citizenship, and even the acknowledgment of one's essential humanity, depend upon the amount of money at one's disposal. A person receives full entitlement only by possessing the means with which to consume products; without means of support one is made to feel like a non-citizen, a ghost. Income and class status mean increased life chances for some, diminished opportunities for others; some enjoy wide horizons while the great global majority face, in the words of theologian Jon Sobrino, "early and unjust deaths."

The morality of the present economy is highly questionable: the permeability of the cash system continually yields "dirty money." While government looks away, revenue is generated by "legitimate" evils such as the alcohol and tobacco industries and the arms trade, and illegal economic activities such as manufacturing sweatshops, child labor, prostitution, drug cartels. As "laundered" money circulates, it mixes with regular banking and financial enterprises and the overall economy.

A Search for Solutions
I am sure that God did not intend there be so many poor. The class structure is of our making and our consent, not God's, and we must do what we can to change it. So we are urging revolutionary change.
         --Dorothy Day

In a period which presents new social conditions and where activism is not as widespread as in the recent past groups around the country are proposing several strategies in order to bring about justice. These are not full-fledged solutions, merely critical and necessary first steps which will take us closer to the Beloved Community envisioned by Dr. King.

• Recognize and celebrate the values that give life meaning, those Cornel West calls "non-market values": kindness, compassion, love, care, and service to others.
  
• Promote an "Economic Bill of Rights" which would guarantee work, a living wage, housing, health care, child care, recreation, sufficient food, and clean air, soil and water. Stress the importance of the natural dignity and rights of all human beings by making economic justice a human rights issue.
  
• Support the "Living Wage" campaigns, which seek to raise pay to meet the actual cost of living. Likewise, set limits on astronomically high executive pay. Build a national awareness of the need for income fairness.
  
• Tax extremes of individual wealth. Social movements advocate lifting up the poorer classes, but don't challenge the existence of elite economic or social classes. It is immoral for humanity to be divided into economic ranks.
  
• Promote a national dialogue on economic democracy, with working people and the poor in the lead. Wage-earners of all kinds should have a voice in the struggle for social change. The question of how to bring about economic justice is not on the national political agenda, nor in mainstream discussions, and until recently has been neglected by the established leadership of the labor movement, the traditional defender of wage-earners.
  
• Heighten awareness of corporate welfare. Expose the ways in which government supports powerful business interests through tax loopholes and subsidies. Emphasize the need for corporate responsibility toward workers, communities, and the environment.
  
• Support labor in its efforts to organize. Endorse campaigns which seek to expose and eradicate exploitative sweatshop conditions.
  
• Empower people of color and other marginalized groups. Speak out against hate crimes. Defend affirmative action laws.
  
• Defend immigrants from scapegoating by nativists and racists. Educate citizens as to the human rights of immigrants and the contributions which they make to society.
  
• Advocate for youth power; ensure that young people have the resources and quality education which they need to exercise their creativity, intelligence and zest for life.
  
• "Work to reduce the rates of imprisonment in the US, which are now the highest in the world and disproportionately entrap people of color. We need to oppose the current prison-building binge, to develop alternatives to incarceration that are also consistent with public safety, and to fund preventive programs like public service employment, drug and alcohol treatment programs, and education and training." 14
  
• Support the call for "definitive cancellation of the crushing international debt where countries burdened with high levels of human need and environmental distress are unable to meet the basic needs of their people or achieve a level of sustainable development that ensures a decent quality of life." 15

Where Do We Go From Here?
Consistent with our vision and life of active nonviolence, we raise the following goals for ethnic and economic justice:

• Meaningful work at a living wage;
  
• Enough income to provide adequate food, clothing, medicine, recreation for every person;
  
• A decent home for every human being;
  
• Recognition of the value of unpaid labor at home;
  
• Universal health care;
  
• Quality education for all;
  
• Protection from economic fears due to old age, youth, sickness, accident, or unemployment;
  
• Quality child care for all families.
  
• Cancellation of the international debt

In 1998, exactly thirty years after the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., and fifty years after the death of Mahatma Gandhi, the U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution calling for an "International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence for the Children of the World (2001-2010)". The adoption of this initiative coincides with and complements the fiftieth anniversary commemoration of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We have lived to see the Gandhian and Kingian visions take a central position on the world stage, even though the fulfillment of those ideals is still to come.

In the spirit of the UN International Decade, the FOR pledges itself to building a People's Campaign of Nonviolence which will the usher in the Beloved Community, where ethnic and economic justice is the norm. The People's Campaign will bring together those who are now voiceless and unrepresented and who desire a just and peaceful society. Understanding the need for a spiritual and moral self-renewal, the FOR proposes a ten year campaign to revitalize and unify these communities.

The market-oriented culture in which we live values objects over people. We are seeing more and more that consumerism does not necessarily mean happiness or a better society; the material abundance offered by the system is often accompanied by a spiritual emptiness and loss of community. By the same token, in many underdeveloped societies where "free-market" privatization is now the law, the masses of the poor groan under the burden of worsening living conditions.

The gap between the shrinking groups of owners of economic-financial monopolies and the growing populations of those who sell themselves for their "meal ticket" grows wider and wider. We are committed to building a popular nonviolent movement from below which will move society in the direction of economic democracy and transform the old conflictive roles into ones of cooperation and fellowship. We are aware of the need for a revolution in our consciousness, if we are to turn toward new ways of living with each other.

Our vision of the future embraces the entire human family. We know that the unjust international imbalances which are now viewed as "normal" will one day be seen as barbaric and cruel. We must see to it that, just as, in the 19th century, chattel slavery was ended throughout most of the world, so too in the future, racial and economic injustice will be abolished.

Progress has been rolled back time and again when oppressive practices resurface under new governments. Bloody revolutions often end up betraying their original ideals, resulting in renewed oppression of the masses of people and the loss of hard-won gains. As Gandhi tried to show, nonviolence is the only method which avoids such pitfalls.

We call for a radical nonviolent revolution where our hopes for social justice are realized without coercion, without bloodshed, and in the spirit of uniting people from every background, every nation, and every faith, in a new type of society.

The Fellowship of Reconciliation calls upon people of all faith traditions, nations, ethnicities, and perspectives to unite in devotion to nonviolence, inclusion and compassion, to work together for racial and economic justice, replacing exploitation with fairness, greed with service to others, hatred with reconciliation, and violence with peace.

Footnotes

1. Quoted in Search for the Beloved Community: The Thinking of Martin Luther King, Jr., Kenneth L. Smith and Ira G. Zepp Jr., 1998.
2. Institute for Food and Development Policy, Sept. 1998.
3. ibid.
4. US Bureau of Census-1997b.
5. Institute for Food and Development Policy, Sept. 1998.
6. Cynthia Taeber, "The Statistical Handbook on Women in America," 1996, p. 145.
7. Holly Sklar, "Jobs, Income, and Work: Ruinous Trends, Urgent Alternatives," P.9, 1995.
8. Department of Defense. According to the War Resisters League the military budgetary "pie" for fiscal year 1999 adds up to a total of $635 billion by calculating the current military expenditure, $299 billion, and factoring in past spending (interest on debt and vets benefits) of $336 billion.
9. Economic Policy Institute.
10. "A Time to Break Silence", I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches That Changed the World, James Melvin Washington, Ed. ,1992.
11. Search for the Beloved Community: The Thinking of Martin Luther King, Jr., Kenneth Smith and Ira Zepp, Jr., Valley Forge: Judson Press, 1998.
12. Carol Bragg, FOR National Council, in correspondence with the FOR Racial and Economic Justice program, 1999.
13. "The Growing Divide: Between the Rich and the Rest of Us," Bonnie Block, Fellowship, July/August 1997.
14. The Jubilee 2000/USA Platform (1998)

©2001 Fellowship of Reconciliation