Civil rights and dignity for the old

If Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had not been the victim of the violence he deplored, he’d have been 78 years old today.

I wonder what wisdom age would have added to his extraordinary dedication to “the cause of justice and the imperative of human dignity.”

One blog responder in the Huffington Post who calls herself auntigrav wrote:

“We must never EVER forget that Civil Rights are not the rights of the groups who get all the press, but the rights of the individual, whatever color or belief they have. Rosa Parks was a person who needed to sit down.

”The fight is always for one person: you, or I, or a child. When we forget the individuals, we forget what Being is all about.”

If King had lived, he might be teaching us today about the civil rights and dignity of older adults, too.

Senior citizens hold—and exercise—great legal power as a voting block. But seniors (and the disabled) who are frail and isolated may depend on people like us to “sit down” on the bus for their right to live in dignity as respected individuals.

Thanks for the courage, commitment, and love you bring to your work with older people.