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The Dream Reborn
Posted by Suzanne Malakoff on 04 April 08, 05:26 PMGuest writer: King County Executive Ron Sims.
Today, on the 40th anniversary of his assassination, we remember Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Every day, in this county that bears his name, we revere Dr. King’s dedication to racial equality and social and economic justice. We work toward the realization of his dreams.
In King County, there is tremendous wealth and opportunity. But if you are a resident of this county, which is relatively well off, the color of your skin or your home address are good predictors of whether you will have a low-birth-weight baby, suffer from asthma, or die from diabetes – essentially how healthy you are and how long you live. Your skin color, income, education level and home address are also very good predictors of many other important non-health outcomes, such as whether your children live in a single-parent household, are homeless or end up in jail.
As Americans we have made enormous strides in our society, and we have seen success stories in public health and general well-being. But in King County, like the rest of the United States, we have two groups of people: those with opportunities who are briskly climbing up the ladder, and those who are not.
At the same time, we in King County and communities across the world face the different but equally daunting problem of global climate change. Climate change itself is fundamentally a question of justice, with the poorest and least resilient communities contributing the least to its cause, but bearing the brunt of its consequences.
To reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change, the solutions we seek must be on the scale of transformation. To prepare for the regional impacts of climate change such as urban heat and intense flooding we must take practical steps to build resilience in our neighborhoods, natural resources and infrastructure. To take these critical actions on the ground in the next decades, we need real people who are trained in new techniques of green building, clean vehicle maintenance, drought-tolerant landscaping, and many other important budding fields.
And this is exactly where Dr. King’s dream for a better way can be reborn. We can begin to identify these “green work” jobs - or the areas for retraining in existing jobs - jobs that provide family wages with a future. We can tailor our workforce initiatives to make the next rung of the career ladder a little easier for people in all neighborhoods — starting with the poorest — to reach. We can and we must.
That is why our King County Climate Team has partnered with our King County Equity and Social Justice Team - not only to look at how climate change impacts poor and vulnerable populations, who are the most affected - but also, even more hopefully, to take on this challenge of educating, empowering and facilitating the transition of these communities to success in the new green professions. We want to make sure that these individuals who have been disproportionately impacted by climate change have full access and ability to get, keep and thrive in the long-term, family wage green work that can transform their lives, their families and their communities, and protect the health of our planet.
Meeting the challenge of global climate change requires a level of collaboration like never before. It requires partnership across sectors and - most of all - with real people. This critical green work has the potential to equalize our society and to build resilience in our communities in ways that Dr. King dreamed aloud over 40 years ago. Let this green work imperative be the fuel for us to renew Dr. King’s dreams in earnest.
Learn more about The Dream Reborn: www.dreamreborn.org