Bernice King Addresses the War on Poverty

  Bernice King, daughter of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., says the key to fighting poverty is organization. “If we’re going to adequately attack most of our social injustices, it’s going to take what my father wrote about, said King. “He specifically said that, ‘The nettlesome task today is to organize our strength into compelling power.’”

King works closely with Operation Hope, an organization that works to achieve what it calls financial dignity. She points to several of its programs including partnering with banks to promote financial literacy and helping people rebuild their credit scores.

While King says the first step is organization, the next steps are smaller ones. “Now that we look at the massive problem of poverty, how can we tackle it one step at a time?” asked King. “Because we cannot bite this humongous apple and put it all in our mouth at the same time: we have to just take one little bite.”

King praised grassroots groups for working to fight poverty in local communities.