Bravo Ralph!
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/baltimore_city/bal-te.md.king21jan21,0,6033054.story?coll=bal_tab01_layout
Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Chasing the dream, 1 new job at a time
Career fair echoes his pursuit of economic justice
Caption: Ralph E. Moore Jr. used the inspiration of the Rev. Martin Luther
King's economic justice campaign to begin an annual job fair that has grown
every year since it began in 2002. (Sun photo by Jed Kirschbaum / January 18,
2008)
By Kelly Brewington | Sun reporter
January 21, 2008
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort
and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
The true neighbor will risk his position, his prestige, and even his life for
the welfare of others. In dangerous valleys and hazardous pathways, he will
lift
some bruised and beaten brother to a higher and more noble life. -- The Rev.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Pasted to Ralph E. Moore Jr.'s door at St. Frances Academy Community Center
is a poignant quote from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. It's not about having
a dream, and it says nothing about the content of one's character.
Rather, the passage comes from King's 1963 Strength to Love speech, which
stresses the need to uplift those who are less fortunate.
It's been the foundation of Moore's anti-poverty activism for more than two
decades. It also serves as inspiration for an annual job fair and skills
training event that the Baltimore community center hosts every year on Martin
Luther
King Jr. Day.
Today, amid parades, volunteer efforts and lectures planned to commemorate
the observance of King's birthday - he would have been 79 - scholars, civil
rights pioneers and activists such as Moore are urging people to remember King,
the champion for economic justice.
Less celebrated than his epic 1963 I Have a Dream speech, the Montgomery
bus boycott or his oratory gifts is King's anti-poverty crusade.
People don't recall that the March on Washington was actually called the
march for jobs and freedom, said Moore, 55. When he died, he was working for
economic justice issues. He was actively organizing a strong coalition of a
variety of races to focus on the poverty issue.
One need look no farther than Baltimore for evidence that poverty and the
social ills associated with it remain 40 years since King's death, Moore said.
Nearly 20 percent of Baltimore's population lives in poverty, the U.S. Census
found in 2006. And an estimated 227,700 Baltimoreans 16 and older are
unemployed
or not in the workforce, according to the city's Job Opportunities Task
Force.
Six years ago, Moore, who grew up in Baltimore's Sandtown community, began
tying King's anti-poverty message to the small job fair. The first event
attracted a few dozen employers, but the demand from job seekers was huge.
Nearly 300
people showed up. It was the first time a formal job fair had come to
Johnston Square, this economically depressed neighborhood just east of Mount
Vernon,
Moore said.
This year, several hundred people have registered for the event, which will
feature workshops on resume writing and interview skills in addition to
recruiting. And unlike many similar events, this one encourages job seekers to
stay
in touch with organizers. The first 10 people who contact Moore on or after
April 4 - the anniversary of the date King was assassinated - will receive
$100,
if they can prove they have retained the job they got at the fair.
It's not a lot, but we want to make sure people connect to jobs, said
Moore, who previously served as vice president of the now-defunct Center for
Poverty Solutions. We are dealing with a tougher population, people with
criminal
records, and there are a lot of discouraged workers because of this.
Moore estimates that about 85 percent of the people attracted to the event
have arrest records, which remains a huge barrier to employment. But it is
precisely the population that most needs employment, he said. Job fair
organizers
reached out to employers who are willing to hire people with criminal records.
These are the folks who are forgotten; this is the invisible population, he
said. But these are people who want to do more and better their lives.
Waged in the final year of his life, King's campaign for full employment was
controversial, unpopular among some of his activist peers and risky.
Culminating in the Poor People's Campaign of 1968, King planned for a
multiracial army
of the poor to descend on Washington in a nonviolent protest urging Congress
to sign a poor people's bill of rights. He called it the second phase of the
civil rights struggle.
He said it over and over again - racism, poverty and war are the triple
evils, said Thomas F. Jackson, a history professor at the University of North
Carolina at Greensboro and author of From Civil Rights to Human Rights: Martin
Luther King Jr. and the Struggle for Economic
