By Will Petrik, Director of Policy & Advocacy
In the weeks before his assassination, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was planning a new march on Washington called the “Poor People’s Campaign.” King envisioned the campaign as a multiracial, cross-class movement that would unite people to demand economic reforms that ensured dignity and security for all Americans. He saw poverty as a moral crisis and believed that economic justice was the next phase of the struggle for equality.
In 1968, Dr. King said, “It didn’t cost the nation one penny to integrate lunch counters… but now we are dealing with issues that cannot be solved without the nation spending billions of dollars and undergoing a radical redistribution of economic power.” He recognized that achieving justice required more than the right to vote and to a decent education—it required all people to have the resources and opportunities they need to thrive.
His plan was to erect a tent city on the National Mall to "dramatize the reality of joblessness and deprivation by bringing those excluded from the economy to the doorstep of the nation's leaders." While mobilizing for the action, he told an audience, “We are going to bring the tired, the poor, the huddled masses. We are going to bring those who have known long years of hurt and neglect. . .We are coming to ask America to be true to the huge promissory note that it signed years ago.”
More than 5 and a half decades later, Dr. King’s vision and critique is as relevant as ever. While a staggering 39% of households struggle to afford basic necessities each month in Franklin County, it’s important to consider how Dr. King approached structural racism and poverty. How might he respond to the crisis so many people are facing today?
Dr. King understood that racial and economic injustice are deeply connected. He called on us to not only treat the symptoms of poverty but to confront its root causes. As he put it, “Just as nonviolence exposed the ugliness of racial injustice, so must the infection and sickness of poverty be exposed and healed.”
In his final book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community, Dr. King argued that past efforts to fight poverty had been largely ineffective because they were piecemeal, underfunded, and failed to address the structural roots of economic injustice. He criticized President Johnson’s War on Poverty for being fragmented and siloed. While housing programs, job training, and family counseling can all help residents, he wrote that “the programs have never proceeded on a coordinated basis. . . At no time has a total, coordinated, and fully adequate program been conceived.”
He also argued that most programs focus on symptoms rather than the underlying causes of economic insecurity, such as systemic racism, economic exploitation, and unequal access to resources. He said, “The programs of the past all have another common failing—they are indirect. Each seeks to solve poverty by first solving something else.” If a resident struggles to pay for groceries, they are also likely struggling to afford the rent, childcare, transportation, and healthcare. Today, most programs still treat each symptom individually rather than provide people and whole families with the stability and opportunity we all deserve.
So what did Dr. King propose? A guarantee of economic security for all people.
Dr. King recognized financial stability as a critical foundation for freedom and the pursuit of a better life. In 1968, he said “We need an economic bill of rights. This would guarantee a job to all people who want to work and are able to work.” In one of his last sermons, King argued, “If a man doesn’t have a job or an income, he has neither life nor liberty nor the possibility for the pursuit of happiness. He merely exists.”
The Poor People’s Campaign called for a guaranteed income, full employment, a living wage, safe, affordable housing, and access to services that support economic mobility, such as schools, healthcare, and other social services. Dr. King argued that the United States should establish an income guarantee that would automatically rise with the national cost of living. In the 1960s, the A. Philip Randolph Institute’s Freedom Budget, developed by Bayard Rustin and economist Leon Keyserling, laid out a bold plan to eliminate poverty by 1975. A key part of the proposal was a guaranteed income. Other iterations of the plan called for direct payments to every citizen, similar to Alaska’s program today, where residents receive a yearly share of state oil revenues.
For those who doubted the Poor People’s Campaign could achieve long-lasting systemic change, Dr. King pointed to the recent success of coordinated direct action. “Two years before we went into Selma, the Civil Rights Commission recommended that something be done in a very strong manner to eradicate [discrimination]. . . And yet nothing was done about it until we went to Selma, mounted a movement, and really engaged in action,” he explained. King knew that lawmakers would never enact bold economic change without committed people organizing “to bring pressure to bear on Congress, and to appeal to the conscience and the self-interest of the nation.”
Just two years later, President Nixon proposed the Family Assistance Plan, a proposal to create an income guarantee for families. The bill would have entitled a family of four to an income floor of $1,600, which would come out to about $17,000 in 2023. This would have nearly eliminated deep poverty in the United States for families in one fell swoop. The Family Assistance Plan passed the United States House of Representatives in 1970 but ultimately ended up dying in the US Senate.
Since Dr. King called for an Economic Bill of Rights in the 1960s, we’ve made some progress—expanding Social Security, strengthening labor protections, and increasing access to healthcare through programs like Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. We’ve also enacted tax reforms, like the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit, that provide some financial relief to working adults and families.
But the core demands of his vision—guaranteed income, good jobs for all, and true economic security—remain unfulfilled. We still have work to do to build an economy and a political system that works for everyone.
Over the past decade, there’s been renewed interest in guaranteed income as a straightforward way to improve people’s financial stability. More than 200 experiments have been conducted or are being conducted on basic income around the world.
One of the most well-known experiments is the expansion of the federal Child Tax Credit (CTC). While the policy was temporary, it’s a clear example of how we can enact policies to improve the lives of children and families in our community. In 2021, the Child Tax Credit provided 1.2 million families in Ohio relief from stress by helping them pay for basic necessities. The program provided most families with children under 18 a monthly payment for six months — $300 per child age 0-5 and $250 per child age 6-17. The average payment to families in Ohio was $442 per month. Families also got a tax refund the following year when then filed their 2021 federal income taxes. Child poverty fell to a record low of 5.2% in 2021.
Just in the last few months, local leaders launched two projects in Franklin County that provide $500 a month to program participants – Ohio Mothers Trust and the Economic Mobility Accelerator Program. The hope for these programs is to provide some stability and help residents reach their goals for a better life.
Gov. DeWine’s proposed budget includes a new state Child Tax Credit for Ohio that would provide up to $1,000 for households with young children. If the General Assembly passes this budget with this Child Tax Credit, an estimated 46,000 children and their families would get some financial relief in Franklin County.
Dr. King’s vision for economic security remains as relevant today as it was more than 50 years ago. By supporting policies that put money directly in the hands of families like a refundable Child Tax Credit and guaranteed income programs, we can create a future where financial security is a reality for all of us.
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