Today is Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr. Day (abbreviated MLK Day). Its also day 30 of the latest
government “shutdown.” Contemplating each day requires contemplating both. And sadly, this year we seem to be even
farther from Dr. King’s vision and call to a higher place.
The furlough
is impacting communities nationwide and has spread its pernicious damage well
beyond the 450,000 or so federal civil servants who have now worked a month
without pay. Hundreds of thousands of
federal contractors – who work beside us daily to deliver federal services to
our fellow citizens – remain furloughed as well, and they will not be back paid
for time lost. Their economic straits will get worse more quickly and honestly
I don’t expect to see many of their faces when we do return to work. Many small businesses are also suffering –
dry cleaners, restaurants, office suppliers, and a thousand thousand others who
rely on federal spending to make their money are now either shuttered or
running on a shoestring. They too will
not be compensated.
Lost in
those grim statistics is the number of immigrants and people of color whose
lives are upended by this. People of color make up 36.7%
of the federal workforce, and many of them are employed by the agencies
currently shuttered. Contractors too are
significant employers of people of color, most notably in the building
maintenance, food service, custodial, and childcare facility contracts. Roughly 25% of the workforce of the
Department of Homeland Security are minorities, which means people of color working
to secure our border are seeing their livelihoods impacted in the President’s
fight over the wall.
Elsewhere
communities of color are being impacted by the closure of HUD; by the decrease
in food safety inspections, and by the inability of the IRS (so far) to issue
tax refunds. Thus this shut down isn’t
just about shafting fed to try and force Democrats to
do something most American don’t want; nor is it winning support for Republicans
(only 29% of respondents in the survey linked to the Examiner article say
Democrats are to blame). Rather, this latest
political intrusion into good government is also impacting communities of color
in growing and pernicious ways.
So what
would King say in response?
There are
few direct quotes in his many speeches and writings about government directly,
except that he notes on many occasions that local governments seek to preserve
a racist status quo in the US. He frequently takes whites to task for their
assertions of moderation and ill timing of the Civil Rights movement, and this
leads me to wonder if he would rebuke those who call for civil servants to just
back up and bear it all. Mostly though,
I believe he would be on the forefront of those who remind us this shut down is
not about border security, but another battle in the long war to bring true
justice to those people of color who labor to make their nation a better place
by working in the government system, even as that government continues to be
used against them.
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