The panelists discussed what economic justice looks like in Atlanta, the fight of the Gullah Geechee on Sapelo Island to preserve their historic Black communities from development and gentrification, and investment in creating jobs and living wages for communities such as the Westside of Atlanta. Photo by Alex Cates/The Atlanta Voice“There is nothing new about poverty. What is new is that we now have the techniques and the resources to get rid of poverty,” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said during his “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution” speech in 1968. Emory Law School hosted its annual MLK Jr. Day lecture on Wednesday to celebrate the civil rights leader’s birthday. This year’s lecture delved beyond King’s focus on racial harmony to examine his activism and fight to eradicate poverty in the U.S. In collaboration with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), King organized the Poor People’s Campaign, a nonviolent protest movement, in 1967. The campaign is just one of the few ways King sought to focus the nation’s attention on economic injustice and systemic poverty through income and housing before his assassination. Crystal McElrath, senior supervising attorney at the Economic Justice Southern Poverty Law Center in Atlanta, was the keynote speaker for the lecture. She explained that most of her recent work has focused on economic justice, such as affordable housing, intergenerational mobility/ building generational wealth, job access, and workers’ rights, and how those intersect to maintain systemic poverty in the U.S., especially with Black Americans. “Poverty persists in America because people will and wish it to do so,” McElrath said.  From water crises in Jackson, Mississippi, to Flint, Michigan, she talked about how the lack of access to clean and affordable water disproportionately affects Black Americans, leading to health risks and economic consequences.Photo by Alex Cates/The Atlanta Voice“Disparities and access to clean water and sanitation follow the same lines as redlining and segregation in almost every area. Black residents are two times more likely to live in communities with lead service lines,” McElrath said. “In Chicago, there was lead infrastructure throughout the entire city by mandate at one point, but by 2020, the only remaining lead service lines were low-income, Black and brown service areas. Intentional decisions were being made at that point.”McElrath was joined by Tolton Pace, the senior program officer of the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation; David McMillon, assistant professor at Emory University’s Department Of Economics; Pierce Hand Seitz, a judge at the Atlanta Municipal Court, and Ifeoma Ajunwa, an Asa Griggs Candler professor of law at Emory University. The panelists discussed what economic justice looks like in Atlanta, the fight of the Gullah Geechee on Sapelo Island to preserve their historic  Black communities from development and gentrification, and investment in creating jobs and living wages for communities such as the Westside of Atlanta. “A hungry man is not a free man,” McElrath said, quoting Adlai Stevenson, a former US Ambassador to the United Nations. “I look forward to seeing how Emory Law School will work to produce the next generation of poverty activists.”Photo by Alex Cates/The Atlanta VoiceThe post Emory University School of Law hosts Dr. King lecture on fighting poverty appeared first on The Atlanta Voice.