On Being Around when History was Made

Today is ML King Jr. day around here and as I drove into down town Walla Walla I was struck by the number of shops that were open for business as usual. That may be good but on the day he was assasinated and for a number of days after a lot of shops just plain closed - fear of riots was the main theme. I was working for the University of Washington at the time directing a federally funded program to evaluate the impact of the "War on Poverty" in the Central area of Seattle. The Social Change Evaluation Project it was called. I had about six or eight or ten doctoral students from different departments in the U all taking part in different aspects of the total project. I was never sure how many because some of them brought their friends to work.

We were all in the project office when the bad news came and I can't begin to describe the level of shock and anger that these students expressed. And I recall that day now and wonder how far we have come in forty years. Okay we elected a black president and that is good, but there is still poverty of the worst kind - homeless families living in cars and packing crates, minority and white children being abandoned by parents who have themselves given up and now a major epidemic of substance abuse to cap the whole thing. And that is just in USA. Apparently the War on Poverty didn't do as well as Lyndon Johnson had hoped.

The United Nations Millenium Development Goals are calculated to eradicate poverty and hunger, and achieve universal primary education, reduce child mortality, improve maternal health, combat HIV/AIDS malaria and other diseases, ensure environmental stability and develop a global partnership for development. Our new president says he will suport these goals and I trust that he will. My only concern is that we need our own Millenium Goals for good old USA. It is time to get off our duffs and do something serious about rescuing our own poor and hungry families and single people too.

There I got that off my chest. I hope the Inauguration goes well and that poor people do not get overloked while we have our big (and expensive) parties.