Introduction The issue of income inequality is a crucial element of your next re-election campaign this fall. Similar to the civil rights movement and the War on Poverty of the 1960s, a high level of inequality can hinder social cooperation, encourage competition within elites, and ultimately during war, as illustrated in the Vietnam War , may further exacerbate the frustrations of the American people. with income inequality. Social Cooperation Turchin mentioned in the Bloomberg article that “high inequality is corrosive of social cooperation” and as Martin Luther King rightly said, “how often the frustrations of second-class citizenship and humiliating status lead us to a blind indignation against one another.”12 The Freedom Ride of 1961 is an example that I can use to illustrate how inequality corrodes social cooperation and can be an instigator of violence. No state obeyed federal law decisions to end segregation and indeed in the Deep South at the time of the Freedom Ride3 it was business as usual The Freedom Riders were trying to get the attention of the president, who at this point in his term had ignored the civil rights movement in favor of the Cold War. .The apathetic and slow response of federal reinforcement was reflected by SNCC member Julian Bond, “The civil rights movement was an afterthought of an afterthought and now all of a sudden all hell is breaking loose”4. The disparity between how blacks were treated compared to whites, the social norms in place that allowed this to happen, and the federal government's slow response set in motion the extreme violence that took place when the Freedom Ride arrived in Alabama. “In reality they (the Freedom Riders) actually courted violence in order to... middle of paper......3,1 2 Howard-Pitney, David, Martin Luther King and Malcolm Jr., Malcolm X and the Civil Rights Struggle of the 1950s and '60s: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin, 2004,125. 3 "Knights of Liberty". American experience. PBS. (2010) Week 7 Papers, Oregon State University, Department of History, Corvallis, OR HST 203.6 George Packer, The Unwinding: An Inner History of The New America (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux), 371 7 George Packer, The Unfolding: An Inside Story of the New America, 366 8 McCormack, John. “Gingrich Will Occupy Wall Street: 'Go Get a Job Right After You Take a Bath'” The Weekly Standard (2011): n. page Web.12 Eric Foner, Give Me Liberty!: An American History,972 13 SNCC Statement of Purpose (October 2010), Week Papers 7, Oregon State University, Department of History, Corvallis, OR HST 203.