Rick Reinhard
At the Poor People's Campaign Rally and March on the National Mall, thousands gathered to unite in the multi-coalitional struggle against the inequalities of 21st century America.
Thousands of founding members of the 2018 Poor People’s Campaign took a stand over the weekend against forty years of bipartisan neoliberal economics. Traveling from around the country, participants capped off forty days of civil disobedience with a rally at the U.S. Capitol to launch the revival of Martin Luther King Jr.’s last great campaign and deliver demands for addressing systemic inequality.
“It was a convergence of the marginalized,” said human rights organizer Yusef Jones about the mass rally held in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, June 22. The moist sticky weather didn’t dampen the crowd’s appetite to hear oratory, prayer, and song about the five enmeshed evils the campaign is up against: systemic racism, poverty, the war economy, ecological devastation, and America’s distorted national morality.
Jones, who’d traveled from Philadelphia, said he was “inspired and galvanized to help bring a revolution by virtue of the voting box.”
The plan is to mobilize the voting registration of the estimated 140 million poor or low-income Americans who are not in the system.
“We’re going to methodically register and re-register all the poor people where needed, so that all our votes count,” Jones said.
The foundational goal of the Poor People’s Campaign is to provide the architecture within which many diverse resistance struggles can unify.
The Poor People’s Campaign aims to provide the architecture to unify diverse resistance struggles.
“One of the nice surprises of this work is that the [campaign] actually wants Jewish perspectives,” said Rabbi Doug Alpert, who serves the Kol Ami (voice of my people) congregation in Kansas City, Missouri.
The Poor People’s Campaign is a movement of “moral fusion,” wherein different faiths, including those of indigenous people, are not just tolerated as a matter of political pragmatism or modeled for show, but are integrated into a common cause.
“The hallmark of good interfaith work is not to say how much we’re alike, but to welcome different theological perspectives,” Alpert explained.
Alpert serves on the Missouri campaign’s coordinating committee and is its legal liaison. He proudly boasts that more “moral witnesses” were arrested for civil disobedience in Missouri than in any other participating state in the country during the forty days of resistance that led up to the mass rally.
“Our group is filled with low-wage workers with courage, people of great humanity and dignity,” Rabbi Alpert said. “I’ve been waiting for this movement all my life.”
After three years of deep organizing in forty states and the District of Columbia building networks of expertise, resource sharing, and support, the state coalitions brought the campaign’s demands to the Capitol.
“We’ve all been in the same boat for some time,” said Rev. Graylan S. Hagler, senior pastor of Plymouth United Church of Christ in Washington, D.C., “We’ve had our victories here and there, clearly not enough. We’re coming together out of our silos, so those who would choose to oppress us can’t marginalize us.”
In D.C., which is represented by a single (non-voting) delegate to the House of Representatives and which has no representation in the U.S. Senate, Hagler says the situation for poor people is dire and that in his own neighborhood, historically black and marginalized, the gentrification has accelerated “to insane levels.”
“I would not be able to afford to even look at my own house. Poor people are being economically forced out of D.C. into Prince George’s County,” he said.
Frances Madeson
After three years of deep organizing, state coalitions from forty states and the District of Columbia brought the Poor People's Campaign demands to the Capitol.
As the movement welcomes more partners committed to nonviolent resistance that centers the needs of poor people, Hagler feels confident that single issue organizations will see the merit in subordinating their individual organizational brands and egos to contribute to a “leaderful” movement. “It works best when people hear their issue lifted up in the context of the whole,” he added.
Aiming for a "leaderful" movement.
The whole Hagler refers to is the “Document of Demands,” many of which overlap with those expressed in Bayard Rustin’s Freedom Budget, a foundational text for the original Poor People’s Campaign. The modern day version was articulated as a result of an audit conducted by the Institute for Policy Studies on the campaign’s behalf, which resulted in a 123-page report called The Souls of Poor Folks.
“In New Jersey, we’re coming out of the rally much stronger,” said Matt Smith, an organizer in the New Jersey office of Food & Water Watch. “I feel it in the people’s resolve.” In the months preceding the rally, Smith spent up to 70 percent of his salaried time on the Poor People’s Campaign, serving on the state’s coordinating committee, even getting arrested three times. Food and Water Watch also contributed research for the audit’s section on equitable access to clean water and the human right to clean water.
“We provided the framework for an intersectional movement which is truly grassroots, bottom-up,” he said. “It felt different from any of the other broad-based coalitions I’ve ever been a part of. The voices and issues of poor people are not only lifted up during the public demonstration, but they’re part of the decision-making team.”
Smith says that some seventy people were arrested in direct actions in New Jersey over the six weeks of civil disobedience that began on Mother’s Day. Some were charged for merely attempting to enter the state capitol, arrests that will be vigorously contested on July 27 when Smith says that he and others will enter a plea of not guilty. Another tense moment came in the second week, when speakers who’d lost family members to militarized police told their stories while surrounded by state police in the capitol. After the rally they marched to the Justice Building and shut it down.
“By connecting with organizers from all over the state in a cross-pollinated movement, coming back week after week,” he said, “it feels like we’re starting to build that beloved community that MLK prophesied.”
Rev. Emily McNeill, executive director of the Labor Religion Coalition of New York State, has devoted most of the last two years to building the network of the campaign’s New York coordinating committee, especially fostering leadership to reveal the power of personal testimony. They held three “Truth Commission” events—public hearings where people spoke with candor about their communities’ poverty and racism.
“We were building on a lot of grassroots connections already in place,” McNeill said. “It gives a lot of hope, when the foundation is rooted in long term deep relationships, and is especially exciting when they’re between people from little towns and big cities.”
This week all across the nation, Poor People’s Campaign state chapters have already begun to come together to reflect and lay out some next steps. Regional and statewide debriefs are also scheduled later in the summer and fall.
“We have to consolidate our people,” she said. “Right now there’s a feeling that we did something exciting together with a lot of laughter, and that we can build on it.”
“I don’t think we know yet, what’s going to happen,” she admitted. “I do think it’s possible for the Poor People’s Campaign to turn things around. In fact, it’s the only thing out there that I think can. Because it’s intersectional and based on our really core values. That’s why.”