Poor People's Campaign

Jim Rice 9-01-2022
Raised hands lift up banners with cartoon-style clouds on a sky-blue background with a bright yellow sun in the center. Behin the banners, blue-gray cartoon clouds are shadowed on a dark gray background

Illustration by Adrián Astorgano

WHY THE RECENT surge in union activity? The nationwide shortage of workers is one factor, to be sure, as is the COVID pandemic. But another contagion might be even more important: Hope. “You see it most clearly with the Starbucks campaign where they won those initial two victories, and it was like a switch going off for people: ‘We can do this!’” labor attorney Alex van Schaick told Sojourners. “There was a contagion effect, in a positive sense. Hope is contagious — I think that’s really true.” Clayton Sinyai, executive director of the Catholic Labor Network, agreed that the confidence and resolve of workers is making a dramatic difference. “It seemed for a long time that employers had gotten so skilled at manipulating the union election process that a lot of people had become very discouraged about trying to form unions,” Sinyai said. “Now we’re seeing a generation of workers who are not taking no for an answer.”

Illustration of a field of red voting check marks

Illustration by Michael George Haddad

IN THE LEAD-UP to the 2020 elections, the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival organized a massive voter drive reaching 2 million poor and low-income voters in 16 states, including battleground states such as Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. This effort, as shown in our October report, “Waking the Sleeping Giant: Poor and Low-Income Voters in the 2020 Elections,” contributed to higher turnout among poor and low-income voters who may be key to shifting the political terrain in 2022, 2024, and beyond.

According to our research, poor and low-income voters (households with income under $50,000 a year) made up approximately one-third of the voting electorate in 2020. They made up at least 20 percent of the total voting population in 45 states and Washington, D.C. In battleground states (those with a margin of victory of 5 percent or less in 2020), the numbers were higher, ranging between 35 and 45 percent of the total vote share. These findings cut against long-standing assumptions that poor and low-income people are apathetic about politics or elections. Instead, we found that they register at comparable rates as the rest of the country—and they vote, especially when their concerns are on the agenda.

Liz Theoharis 12-20-2021
Sen. Joe Manchin

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) speaks with an aide during a break in the impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump in Washington,  Jan. 24, 2020. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

After months of negotiations, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) decided to kill the Build Back Better agenda. He made the announcement on Fox News Sunday, just days before an already-fraught holiday as we’re seeing COVID surges, essential workers still being paid wages of those considered expendable, and storms and extreme weather wreaking havoc on lives and livelihoods. When voicing his dissent for the Build Back Better agenda, despite making promises that he was negotiating in good faith since the summer, Manchin had the nerve to say: “I tried everything humanly possible.”

Mark Dovich, Hazel Tang 8-03-2021

Rev. Angela B. Martin, who was arrested during a National Moral Monday Action demonstration and march, displays her arrest ticket on Aug. 2, 2021 in Washington, D.C. Hazel Tang for Sojourners.

Around 500 voting rights activists and faith leaders sat outside the Hart Senate Office Building singing hymns, protesting poverty, and calling for federal protection of voting rights on Monday. The actions were a part of the Poor People's Campaign’s National Moral Monday Action, and organizers said U.S. Capitol Police arrested around 200 people over the course of the protest.

With less than a month to go until President-elect Joe Biden takes office, The Poor People’s Campaign has joined the Congressional Progressive Caucus in calling for a seven-part legislative agenda aimed at helping poor Americans amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

Cassie M. Chew 12-15-2020

Belongings on the lawn of an evicted house in Detroit. Peek Creative Collective / Shutterstock.com

“There are a lot more people who are poor, but living above the poverty line,” said Anne Price, president of the Insight Center, an economic justice advocacy group based in Oakland, Calif. “The measure that we use is so antiquated, not just in how it calculates a household budget and what's left out, but also because it doesn't reflect real, contemporary lived experience, different household types, or regional differences.”

Poor People's March in Washington, D.C., in Washington, D.C. on May 14, 2018. Photo by Rebekah Fulton for Sojourners.

We have said from the very beginning of our work together that our goal is to shift the moral narrative in this country. And we know that means changing who holds power.

Christina Colón 6-22-2020

Rev. Dr. William Barber II and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, co-chairs of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, in Washington, D.C. on May 14, 2018. Photo by Rebekah Fulton for Sojourners.

On Saturday, more than 2 million people gathered virtually to “call for a radical redistribution of political and economic power” as part of the Mass Poor People’s Assembly and Moral March on Washington Digital Justice Gathering. 

Christina Colón 6-17-2020

Rev. Dr. William Barber II and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, co-chairs of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, in Washington, D.C. on May 14, 2018. Photo by Rebekah Fulton for Sojourners.

This Saturday, people across the country will come together digitally to demand action from public officials as part of the Mass Poor People’s Assembly & Moral March on Washington.

Terence Lester 8-21-2019

Photo by Steve Sanchez

As we get closer to the general election, persons of the Christian faith and the church must hold political figures accountable, helping to rewrite the false narratives concerning the poor and marginalized in our country so we can love those on the margins as Jesus would.

Mallory McDuff 3-29-2019

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

Maybe it was Rev. William Barber’s preaching that touched me with the moral call to climate justice, in partnership with Al Gore, whose organization Climate Reality Project brought this audience together for a three-day training. Later that night, I realized why the message felt personal: Barber pushed me to reframe my conversations with my daughters about climate justice in this country. I teach environmental education at a small college in North Carolina, but the way I communicated at home around the kitchen table needed a transformation.

Jeff Hoagland 5-23-2018

Last week, the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival kicked off with eight weeks of nonviolent direct action every Monday. Movements have long recognized the deep work necessary to build community, and that is why after the mass arrests on Monday, the campaign hosts #TruthfulTuesdays, a series of teach-ins for social justice. As the Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis said at the first one, “Yesterday we were loud. But we can’t be loud and wrong.”

Rebekah Fulton 5-15-2018

Photos from the Poor People's Campaign Launch in D.C.

Christina Colón 5-14-2018

Image by Rebekah Fulton/Sojourners

“Today is Mother’s Day,” Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, said to the crowd. “A holiday established by women with a rich history of activism and resistance, who called for an end to violence and won. Standing in our nation’s capital, I have a question for our country: Is denying healthcare to mothers and their children a way to show love to mothers?"

Betsy Shirley 4-04-2018

BY MOST MEASURES, the day had been a success. On the morning of Dec. 4, 2017, nearly 300 people crammed into a small room near Washington, D.C.’s Capitol Hill to reignite the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign. Camera crews filmed while clergy, Indigenous leaders, Fight for $15, Iraq Veterans Against the War, and state groups from around the country pledged their support.

From there the leaders marched to the U.S. Capitol to deliver a letter condemning the then-looming tax bill. “Woe to those who make unjust laws,” they read from Isaiah 10, “to deprive the poor of their rights.”

Later, the same crowd—plus locals lured by a lineup featuring Sweet Honey in the Rock, Maxwell, and Van Jones—gathered at D.C.’s Howard Theater to celebrate. Faith leaders and activists who’d linked arms together in places such as Flint, Mich., Charleston, S.C., and Standing Rock in the Dakotas sipped drinks and ate free ice cream provided by Ben and Jerry’s. The overall vibe was part social-justice pep rally, part family reunion.

But Rev. William Barber II wasn’t feeling it.

While the DJ played ’80s hip-hop, Barber lumbered onto the stage unannounced. He didn’t have a microphone, so he just started yelling. The perplexed stage crew scrambled to find a working mic, but Barber was impatient. The DJ cut the music and the theater grew quiet.

“My brothers and sisters,” boomed Barber once he had a mic. “This is a Poor People’s Campaign mass meeting and concert; this is not a party.”

‘Make this nation cry’

For the next 10 minutes, Barber worked his way through the litany of injustices that he and Rev. Liz Theoharis, co-chairs of the campaign, had repeated from countless pulpits over the past year as they crisscrossed the country recruiting people for the Poor People’s Campaign: deaths caused by lack of health insurance, the rollback of voting rights, corporate drilling on Native American lands, homelessness, police violence, an unlivable minimum wage, Flint’s inability to provide its citizens with clean water, political corruption. He spoke without notes, rambling at times (“I don’t have time to be scripted because the evil that’s happening is not scripted”), but it didn’t matter; as he neared the end of his list, the mood of the room had grown somber.

People gather to march in the annual parade down MLK Boulevard to honor MartinLuther King, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, U.S., January 16, 2017. REUTERS/Billy Weeks

“Then we poor people will move on Washington, determined to stay there until the legislative and executive branches of the government take serious and adequate action on jobs and income.”

 

Trevor Barton 9-25-2012
Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Poor People's March on Washington, D.C., 1968. Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images

In early 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr., and other civil rights leaders continued plans for a Poor Peoples Campaign. It would take place in the spring in Washington, D.C. The poor and those in solidarity with them would take up temporary residence and march peacefully on the Capitol and advocate for substantial anti-poverty legislation from Congress. They would demand jobs, healthcare, and decent housing.

People set up a camp on the Washington Mall and called it Resurrection City. Jesse Jackson gave his famous "I Am Somebody" speech there. But King was assassinated in the weeks leading up to the campaign and Robert Kennedy was assassinated during it. Disheartened and discouraged, people drifted away from the campaign, their dreams deferred.

What if MLK had lived to lead the campaign with his insight and eloquence? What if Bobby Kennedy had lived to support it with his doggedness and political will? Would the United States be a place where 1 out of 5 children, around 15.5 million, are in poverty and where close to 50 million people are without health insurance?