The Modern Civil Rights Movement: Not A Thing of the Past – Eva Schulte

The ‘March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom’[1] continues in our day.  It was seen this past month when hundreds of thousands of low wage workers went on poverty wage strike and hundreds of thousands of people like me stood and marched with them.

The past tense-ing of the civil rights movement doesn’t honor anyone.  The honor comes when we seguir adelante–carry on ahead, remembering each story and growing strength from these stories along the way.

JOBS TODAY:  Economic polarity has stretched our middle class thin.  Poverty wages force full time workers earning only $290 per week into predatory products like payday lending, where they pay triple digit rates, spiraling deeper and deeper into debt.

FREEDOM TODAY:  Today incarceration and foreclosure rates are segregating and wealth stripping at higher rates than the days of Jim Crow.

In Kansas and Missouri we are organizing communities for Economic Dignity and Racial Equity.  We are lifting up the stories of our workforce and their families. We are confronting usury and triple digit interest rates that became the norm when profits became a value and people became the commodity.  Watch them in action:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfkiTKccvIA&feature=youtu.be

Our model of organizing is deeply rooted in the movement for civil rights.  We honor the power of faith to call forward a new reality, a prophetic living into the creation and image God intends for us.  ¡Seguimos adelante!

Eva Schulte serves as Executive Director of Communities Creating Opportunities, a member of the PICO National Network.  Eva is a Diaconal Minister in the Lutheran Church (ELCA) and holds a MA in Ethics and Social Theory from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA. For 12 years, she has organized communities through the PICO National Network, beginning her career in the Northern California bay area and eight years ago moving to Kansas City to direct CCO. Eva leads CCO’s strategic direction, partner alignment, and organizational management. She is fluent in Spanish and also serves as the Executive Director of CCO’s statewide network, Missouri Faith Voices.

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[1] This March, which took place in 1963, is known to many because of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech that took place on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC at the end of the march.