Hat-tip to BlueGrassRoots and Ben Carter

We'd like to give a hat-tip to BlueGrassRoots and blogger Ben Cater particularly for helping to publicize the KFTC Annual Meeting, giving a great report-back from our keynote speaker last night (below), participating this whole weekend, and being an important speaker in our Technology and Organizing workshop.

Phil Thompson: Solutions for Communities and Their Organizations

From BlueGrassRoots

Wow.  That was NOT the speech I expected from an urban planning professor from MIT.  Phil Thompson just rocked the hizouse! 

To keep you reading, let me just say that Dr. Thompson dropped some revolutionary knowledge bombs on the KFTC membership...

First, Dr. Thompson talked briefly but lucidly about the credit crisis, explaining in layman's terms collateral-backed securities and credit default swaps. 

Then, he moved on to the crux of his message.  What follows is a crude paraphrase of what he said:

I want to talk about a few of the challenges and rays of hope facing our communities.  

We've let the civil rights movement slip away.  We have forgotten what Martin Luther King's primary message was--you know, he didn't give just one speech.  People forget that when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, he was in Memphis to support a strike of sanitation workers.  MLK's demand--not only in Memphis but all across America--was full employment.  In 1959, MLK gave a speech to the AFL-CIO in which he proposed merging the civil rights movement and the labor movement.  Labor demurred.  

We let full employment slip away and settled for affirmative action.  We let it go because we were afraid of being red-baited.  In the 1960s, 24% of African-American families were in the bottom 10% of the income bracket.  Today, that number is 39%.  

After settling for affirmative action, which has not lifted African-Americans out of poverty, Ronald Reagan sold the American people the Big Lie: that African-Americans are the reason taxes are too high.  This lie has divided poor people for nearly three decades.  

Progressive people have lost their way on economics.  For the last thirty years, we have had no answer for outsourcing.  But, there are some things happening that are the beginnings of answers...

Thanks, Ben, and everyone should consider checking out his blog at www.bluegrassroots.org