When mainstream accounts address the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy, they often ignore the fact that in the last years of his life, King extended his focus from civil rights to human rights and economic justice. He not only opposed militarism and the war in Vietnam, but he also called on the nation’s poor and dispossessed to mobilize and organize on their own behalf. Furthermore, he made clear that the movement needed to employ “militant nonviolence,” with tactics including blockades of government buildings in a wide-ranging and ongoing campaign to pressure elected officials and government agencies to prioritize the needs of low-income people.
For almost a decade, the Nonviolent Medicaid Army (NVMA) has picked up this mantle, and has worked to build King’s vision of a “nonviolent army of the poor.” Led by Medicaid recipients and other low-income people, the NVMA organizes around short-term goals such as reopening shuttered hospitals, and long-term goals such as opposing rising expenditures for the military, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and border patrol, and the construction of new prisons. The group’s agenda demands increased funding for social welfare programs including Medicaid and SNAP and calls for the elimination of cancer-causing chemicals from our air, food, and water. Moreover, the group has pushed for the creation of tens of thousands of affordable, accessible, and safe housing units nationwide.
NVMA members say their work is dedicated to completing the mission of King’s 1968 Poor People’s Campaign—which sought to take on America’s unequal class structure and build a society that values each person—by organizing from the bottom up.
There are presently thirteen NVMA state chapters, but its leaders say the group is growing rapidly. Each chapter addresses local and national policies, from educating people about the impending rollout of federal work rules for SNAP and Medicaid recipients, to providing hands-on mutual aid, and supporting or opposing bills that ameliorate or worsen poverty, suffering, and economic precarity. In Pennsylvania, the state chapter of the NVMA has lobbied for the creation of a Public Healthcare Advocate to help residents appeal health care costs without paying expensive legal fees.
Precarity takes center stage in much of the NVMA’s work. Its #MedicaidMondays campaign on social media gives people who are facing Medicaid terminations or reductions a platform to denounce the cuts, inviting them to post short videos to highlight the personal impact of benefits retrenchment in their lives. Participants vary in age, race, gender, ethnicity, and religious tradition.
Iletha Joynes is a leader of the Maryland human rights organization United Workers (UW), which is an affiliate of the NVMA. She says that the United Workers’ Right to Health campaign—which predates the NVMA—and its “Projects for Survival” are a model for NVMA chapters nationwide.
According to Joynes, UW projects—which have been replicated by numerous NVMA chapters and affiliates—include a monthly free food distribution for people in Allegheny and Carroll counties, with twice-monthly distributions in Baltimore. In addition, volunteers provide concrete information in local community settings, advising them on how to apply for Medicaid and SNAP; how to protect access to and receipt of benefits; and how to file an appeal of an application denial or termination notice, among other topics.
“A trained member of United Workers walks people through the application or reapplication process,” Joynes tells The Progressive. “We interact with hundreds of people every month in every region of the state, and have also hosted People’s Clinics, where we do blood pressure screenings and talk to people about their health.”
But Joynes stresses that the efforts of both UW and the NVMA go beyond direct service. “Our goal is ending poverty,” she says. So while the organization hosts speak-outs, attends and organizes demonstrations, and encourages members to testify at public hearings about cutbacks and policy shifts, it also works to educate people “about why poverty exists and encourage[s] them to work with both organizations to demand systemic change and build their power as poor people.”
Political education, Joynes says, is woven into everything that United Workers does; this includes attending the NVMA’s monthly trainings and workshops for activists and allies. In early January, for example, an NVMA class zeroed in on King’s final years and his efforts to build a Nonviolent Army of the Poor. The presenters read from King’s writings and centered on his conclusion that the United States will never solve its problems without “a redistribution of economic and political power,” a task that required, and continues to require, people to unite and commit to working together in every nook and cranny of the country.
It is a huge mission, and one that is frequently invoked by individuals and organizations working for social change, rather than reforms. But Medicaid recipient Kelly Smith, an active member of the New York State chapter of the NVMA and part of the group’s national organizing team, tells The Progressive that while many other groups have pledged to organize a sustained fightback, the NVMA’s effort to educate the poor so that they can become knowledgeable movement leaders sets it apart.
“This is a long-haul fight,” Smith says. “We know that we can’t change the system without understanding it, so we invest time to break things down into elements we can study. We know that we can’t rely on the systems that are currently in place. That’s why we don’t focus on elections or the two parties. This doesn’t mean that we don’t vote or support or oppose particular pieces of legislation, but we prioritize studying history and learning from the example of people who came before us.” Among them, she says, are King, Johnnie Tillmon and Beulah Sanders of the National Welfare Rights Organization, and anti-imperialist activist General Gordon Baker. She calls their example foundational in helping the NVMA set priorities.
One of the NVMA’s prime demands for 2026 is slashing military spending. “The same system that is funding an expanded military apparatus is depriving people of health care, food, and an education,” she says. “These issues are intertwined.”
Dr. Marc F. Shi, an internal medicine specialist at a federally funded health center in the Bronx, is also an active member of the New York NVMA. “As someone working in health care, I see that the forces that limit a physician’s ability to provide comprehensive care to patients, that isolate us as workers, and that lead us to burnout, are the same forces that are cutting Medicaid and SNAP.”
Many of his patients, Shi continues, are worried about losing benefits if they are unable to comply with work rules and other programmatic changes. “It’s hard for many of my patients to focus on their health when having enough food for themselves and their children or maintaining stable housing is not assured,” he says.
This insecurity makes the NVMA’s monthly “People’s Clinics”—a program similar to the mutual aid clinics organized by Maryland’s United Workers—essential. “These outdoor gatherings, held in a public park when weather permits, allow us to meet people’s immediate survival needs and help them connect their situation to what’s going on in the country more generally,” Shi says. “We talk with folks and invite them to organize with us. It’s slow work, and it can feel like we’re not moving forward, but we’re building a permanent base of organized resistance.”
Smith agrees. “This year began with everyone feeling the pain of so much loss, with the attack on Venezuela, the murder[s] of Renée Good [and Alex Pretti] and rampant ICE violence pulling on people’s attention. But then I step back for a moment, and in doing so, I can see that the NVMA is growing in ways that are challenging and exciting. At the end of the day, the need for healthcare is the struggle that unites everyone.”
The NVMA will host an online event called “February 2026 School of Struggle: Understanding and Surviving the Economic Crisis.” Participants can register at this link.