I Am A Man!

Recently, while preparing a presentation to share with participants in a summer work camp focused on housing repair in inner city Memphis, Tennessee, my friend and partner, Charles Senteio (check out the link to his blog at right) sent me a copy of Robert Worsham's moving poem, "I Am A Man."

You may recall that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. used this poem during his last public action among striking sanitation workers in Memphis. Dr. King's fateful trip to Memphis in April 1968 ended his life, but not his dream.

As I read over the poem again, I can feel the power and the spirit of a movement for justice in our shrinking world's troubled economy.

Don't look at me with disdain,
For I am not a weakling, I am a man.
I stood when to stand
Brought severe reprimand,
I spoke, when to speak
Brought denunciation from the weak,
And brutal attacks from those in power,
But to me this was my greatest hour,
With chin thrust out and head up proud,
I stood up straight and I said out loud,
I am a man!
And I shall always defy
The oppression of mankind
until the day I die.

The photo above was taken during the sanitation workers' strike.

Dr. King stood with his brothers to affirm them in their claim of this more than obvious human reality. Dr. King's involvement also made clear his commitment to work for economic justice in addition to racial equality. For Dr. King both were central to his faith.

When it comes to employment and the day-to-day and year-to-year issues facing laboring people, it seems that the church today has little or nothing to say.

If anything, there appears to be a growing movement among AmericanChristianss in support of public policies which actually widen the economic gap between rich and poor in the nation. Executive pay continues to rise while laboring people slide farther and farther behind. Federal tax policy disproportionately benefits the wealthy at the expense of low-income working people.

Shame on us as people of faith and on our leaders and spokespersons.

Working people deserve fair wages. Working families should be rewarded for their labor.

Included in the rewards that hard working people have a right to expect should be adequate, affordable housing; good health care options; high-quality educational opportunities for themselves and their children and, most of all, respect and voice.

Most of the people we engage here at Central Dallas Ministries work and work hard.Their work just doesn't pay off like it should.

My faith tells me that fairness and justice in matters of labor, production and profit are value issues plain and simple.

I believe Dr. King would have agreed.

That's why he went to Memphis.