Dr. King and the Mission of Project HOME

Today, the Project HOME community joins the rest of the nation in honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This life and work of this towering figure of justice has been a touchstone for our mission for many years. Our own commitment to human dignity and community draws from his powerful vision, which still resonates many decades later.

Our vision statement – “None of us is home until all of us are home” – is a variation on a theme that was critical to Dr. King and the leaders and activists of the civil rights movement, that “none of us are free until all of us are free.” They understood that while the immediate struggle of the movement was to break down the legal and social disenfranchisement of African Americans, the broader vision was, as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference declared in 1957, to “redeem the soul of America.” If a nation founded on the radical principles of the equality and freedom of each person denied basic rights to some of its citizens, then the entire democratic project was intrinsically poisoned. Racial injustice ultimately wounded all Americans.

In his later years, Dr. King increasingly understood that the crisis in our nation was not simply one of racial injustice, but also fundamental economic injustice. Unfortunately, this aspect of his public witness is largely marginalized in the national commemoration, but Dr. King similarly recognized that a nation that permitted dramatic inequities of wealth and poverty, that allowed millions of its citizens (Blacks, Whites, and others) to languish in inhumane poverty, was a nation in serious spiritual and social crisis. That’s why his main focus in his last years was organizing the Poor Peoples Campaign, to bring together people of all races in dramatic nonviolent action to focus national attention on economic injustice. That’s why he went to Memphis (against the advice of many of his colleagues) to support a sanitation workers’ strike – and there would meet his fate from an assassin’s bullet.

In our own humble efforts to continue the work of Dr. King, we believe that the struggles of our homeless sisters and brothers are our struggles as well; and we believe that in working to end homelessness and poverty, we are not just helping “the less fortunate,” but trying to heal the broader society. We do not see ourselves as working on a particular “issue” or a single “cause” – we are trying to build what Dr. King called “the Beloved Community." We hope and pray that Dr. King’s vision takes deeper root in our lives and in our society, and that it empowers us to redeem the soul of our nation and make this a truly just and compassionate society for all of us.

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly." – Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"None of us is home until all of us are home." -- Vision Statement of Project HOME