Highlights:
Tavis: When you think of Dr. King now and having lost him 40 years ago – let me ask it a different way. How often do you think of him in your work now, 35 years later, and what do you think?
Edelman:Â …He would be very pleased to see that we’ve got a possibility of a Black president of the United States and all the Black middle class folk and all the folk who are sitting up in Fortune 500s and in the cabinet. But he would not be pleased to see all the poor children and the big bottom that has grown in America, and the fact that we’ve got the largest gap between rich and poor we’ve ever had since we began to keep this data.
And he warned us about buying into the valleys of a burning house. And he would not be pleased that a lot of folk who are presiding over the policies that are hurting Black and poor people and that are militaristic are Black folk and we threw out our spiritual baby in the bathwater of American materialism…
Tavis:Â …what do you make of these prima fascia comparisons between Obama and King and the t-shirts and the hats and all that? What do you make of that in this moment?
Edelman: Well, I think we’re all standing on Dr. King’s shoulders, okay? And I think that I try to take these as an affirmation that there was a great prophet that came and set the stage for all of us, that some parts of his dreams are being fulfilled. And I think that he would be very proud of Barack Obama.
Now the issue is, how do we build the citizens, though? Because a President Obama or a President McCain – none of these are going to be able to do what we need to have done in our country in resetting our moral compass and in resetting our priorities without a citizen’s movement and without accountability, so that our job is not only get out and vote and make sure that we get the best person who we could get out of our choices today, but then we’ve got to make sure that we put forth Dr. King’s dream, which is ending poverty in America..
See entire interview here.