The Rev. Liz Theoharis, co-chair of the renewed Poor People’s Campaign, speaks with Street Roots before Saturday’s historic demonstration, which will include appearances by celebrities and political leaders
Over 50 years after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. launched the Poor People’s Campaign and called for a movement that would unite poor communities, the campaign has been revived in the United States.
In late 2017, the Rev. Liz Theoharis and the Rev. William Barber II reignited and expanded the 1968 campaign, calling it “A National Call for Moral Revival.”
On June 20, these leaders of faith will bring together poor and low-income people across the country to share their stories and march virtually on Washington, D.C., to announce their moral policy agenda.
Q&A: William J. Barber II calls for a moral America
This campaign will address the poverty and inequality that has been illuminated with the pandemic and the protests against police brutality. It champions an agenda that ties together five interconnected injustices: systemic racism, systemic poverty, ecological devastation, the war economy and militarism, and a distorted moral narrative of religious nationalism.
The organizers intend for the Mass Poor People’s Assembly and Moral March on Washington to be the largest online gathering of poor and low-income people in U.S. history. It will unite 14 national unions, 16 national religious denominations, 46 state organizing committees and dozens of civil rights organizations. Sponsoring organizations have a reach of 40 million people, not including the many TV and radio stations broadcasting the march.
The assembly and march will be aired at 7 a.m. and 3 p.m. Pacific time today and 3 p.m. Sunday. It can be viewed on june2020.org and MSNBC and on other local and national stations. The event will feature guests such as former Vice President Al Gore, entertainers Danny Glover, Jane Fonda and Wanda Sykes, and many poor and low-income Americans who will tell their stories.
After launching their policy platform at the assembly, leaders will continue to organize on the state level to build a grassroots movement. This summer, the campaign plans to release a study showing that even if 15% of poor and low-income voters united around a policy agenda, they could change the political calculus of this nation.
Street Roots spoke to Theoharis, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign and director of the Kairos Center, about the importance of the movement and her experience as an anti-poverty organizer.
Hanna Merzbach: In 1968, King and others built the Poor People’s Campaign and called for a “revolution of values” in the U.S. How have you expanded on the focus of the Poor People’s Campaign since King’s time?
Liz Theoharis: The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, which we marched about three years ago, was one of the most expansive waves of nonviolent civil disobedience in the 21st century, and it really does take deep inspiration from the ’68 campaign. In fact, we even had leaders that were a part of that campaign. But Dr. King’s (movement) started with three issues — racism and poverty and militarism — and we’ve expanded to include also ecological devastation and distorted moral narrative of religious nationalism. I think, 50 years later, we’ve seen that we have to do that in order to be true to the injustices of the world.
We are building a really state-based movement that is nationalized through activities and actions and protests and policy. But instead of just having folks come to Washington, like it’s the “Resurrection City” that Dr. King and others proposed, we see people really going back into their communities and building power from the ground up there. We have 46 committees in 46 states across the country that are made up of and led by those that are most impacted by poverty and injustice, that also include and involve faith leaders, activists and other advocates. We’ve been trying to pull people together across all of these different lines that divide into a powerful movement to resolve these issues.
REVIVAL: 50 years after King's assassination, his Poor People’s Campaign re-emerges
Merzbach: Do you see any parallels between your campaign and the uprising against police brutality?
Theoharis: We start with the issue of systemic racism and see how that shows itself in voter suppression, in mass incarceration, in state and police violence, in the inequality in health care and education. The leaders of the Poor People’s Campaign have been very active in the last couple weeks and months in some of these protests, and we have been protesting these issues for years. Many of the leaders of the grassroots protests have brought their organizations into the Poor People’s Campaign to build a movement and to have broad policy demands that include police reform and of course redirecting funds from the police to social programs, like education and health care.
But, they also see that we need bold and visionary policies that take that seriously. If you want to talk about racism and whether lives are valued, we have to see that 61% of African Americans are poor or low income and that there’s a resegregation happening in our schools, that the majority of the folks that have been deemed essential workers in this pandemic are women of color. So we have to see the connections of all of these and therefore really build power and fight for a policy platform that sees the inter-separability of all of these issues.
Merzbach: Has the campaign made any achievements in mitigating the economic fallout from the pandemic?
Theoharis: We’ve been sounding the alarm about the problems of poverty and inequality for many years. So before the novel coronavirus was here, there were 140 million people in the U.S. that were poor or low-income. And, 250,000 people were dying per year in the U.S. from poverty and inequality — that’s about 600 a day.
We had proposed this moral budget, and we had gone to the Budget Committee of the House of Representatives a year ago and suggested that if they didn’t enact a budget like this, that the country’s democracy was really at stake and that we were really vulnerable to crises — like the pandemic and other events that could cause an economic downturn.
Then, very shortly after the pandemic was declared a pandemic, we came out with a series of demands. All of them were in our demands and our moral agenda that we proposed to Congress before, but also ones that spoke directly to some of the particular issues that people are facing. So we have a demand around water and being able to access water. That translated into water shut-off moratoriums and also affordable water programs that have been enacted in the pandemic in different states across the country. Similarly, with housing, having a moratorium on evictions, providing homeless families with housing options.
Some of that organizing was really happening before the pandemic. Even the very idea of a universal basic income and the cash payment off of stimulus checks has its roots in an income guarantee that rights leaders have been talking up in our midst for decades now.
"We’re going to be able to reach so many more people. The resources it was going to take for poor and homeless and uninsured and low-wage worker folks to be able to come to D.C. are really different from being able to get online or tune in to one of the radios that are broadcasting it."
We’ve been directing people to come out for the Mass Poor People’s Assembly and Moral March on Washington this Saturday as a turning point in this country where we can hear the stories but then also the solutions and have more people get involved and build real power, and put our elected officials on notice that these are the issues that millions and millions of people are coming around and demanding justice.
Merzbach: Are you worried the march will lose its impact being virtual? How will Washington know it’s being marched on?
Theoharis: We see this really as an opportunity. We’re going to be able to reach so many more people. The resources it was going to take for poor and homeless and uninsured and low-wage worker folks to be able to come to D.C. are really different from being able to get online or tune in to one of the radios that are broadcasting it.
As people’s eyes are being opened and they’re being awakened to these deep inequalities and a protest movement that is breaking out in lots of places, we’ve been able to pull together hundreds of partner organizations, about 20 national bodies that represent millions and our 46 coordinating committees.
An event like that isn’t the end — it’s the beginning. So we see that there’s some real opportunity with having this be the largest social media and online gathering of the poor and low income and others in U.S. history, because we think that being able to see those numbers and then being able to impact so many through this is really going to be able to bring unity and an organization to do the work.
SLIDESHOW: Photos from the 1968 Poor People's Campaign
Merzbach: There are campaign organizing committees in most states. Why do you think the movement has not become more prominent in Oregon, in particular?
Theoharis: The Poor People’s Campaign and the National Call for Moral Revival is still a young movement. We launched it in spring of 2018, and so much of the theory of change that we have is about the grassroots organizing of local people across the country. And there is a coordinating committee in Oregon, but they are one of the newer state coordinating committees that have formed.
Many (state committees) have been doing some work, especially around issues like health care, housing and homelessness, that have been really involved so far. I think folks see this as an opportunity to reach out to others and get more people in the movement for justice involved, not just in the form of the campaign but in this uprising of protests and movement building in this moment. Although we have many partners, hundreds of them on a national level, again so much of our work is really about grassroots communities across the country, people coming together and being connected together. We see that continuing to build and grow in Oregon and all across the country.
Merzbach: Like you say, there is often a “distorted moral narrative of religious nationalism” in this country. How do you combat this perception in relation to the campaign?
Theoharis: Since Dr. King launched this campaign 50 years ago, there has been a narrative around who is poor and why people are poor, and blaming poor people and immigrants and people of color for all of society’s problems, pitting us against each other, using race, geography, sexuality, religion, and then feeding us these lies that this is as good as it gets — that there’s scarcity when we’re living in a society that is throwing away more food than it takes to feed everyone.
A lot of the focus of our work has really been about shifting that narrative, telling a different story and getting people to see that the real moral issues of our day is our health care and wages and education and an end to police violence and a stop to mass incarceration and immigrant rights and LGBTQ rights.
To shift that narrative, we have to shift the narrator. At this point, there are 140 million people, almost half of the U.S. population, that are poor or low income, but you’re not hearing from many of them. I believe in the possibility of a different society and a movement that can build the power to, in the words of Dr. King, “make the power structure of this nation say yes when they may be desirous to say no.”
I think some of this is narrative change, but then also power change happens when politicians and elected officials are having to hear from the people and hear what people want. Folks are starting to understand and realize both the precarity and injustices of our society, but then also the fact that we can’t look to the rich and powerful to support solutions that the poor and marginalized have been victims of for so long. The power of this campaign is that it is led by those that are most impacted by racism by injustice and who really believe that we need a broad and diverse movement.
"To shift that narrative, we have to shift the narrator. At this point, there are 140 million people, almost half of the U.S. population, that are poor or low income, but you’re not hearing from many of them."
There are people of faith that are in leadership roles — obviously myself and Rev. Barber are co-chairs and are both preachers. But we have people that are Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Christian and Muslim. And we have people that are atheist, agnostic and not of faith and of faith and I think that people just recognize that there’s deep injustice that’s wreaking havoc on society and that we need a moral revolution of values, that any society that that can have the wherewithal to have the resources to address these problems but isn’t — that’s a problem.
Look at the response of the government to the pandemic and also to the protests. For months in this pandemic, we’ve had doctors and nurses and essential workers not having the PPE that they need, but within a day of protests happening, the police are there fully protected with full PPE.
Merzbach: You have worked as an anti-poverty activist for over 20 years. What have you learned about poverty in America and fighting against systems of oppression?
Theoharis: Over the last couple of years, Rev. Barber and myself and others in the campaign have been traveling pretty constantly. We’re really seeing a dire emergency of poverty but one that is not really reported on the level to which it exists. I mean (poverty) is diverse, it’s young, it’s old, it’s Latino, it’s Black, it’s white, it’s Indigenous, it’s people that are straight, it’s people that are queer. I mean, obviously women and people of color are disproportionately poor, but poverty really knows no boundaries. For almost half of a country that is so rich to have people living in poverty and precarity, it really undermines the democracy and rights of this nation.
Merzbach: Is this campaign personal to you? Did you come from poverty?
Theoharis: I was raised in a family that had an extended family that was experiencing poverty and insecurity. As I got involved in this work, I’ve experienced poverty myself as well. I was without health care for years. I’ve worked all kinds of low-wage jobs. I went homeless staying on friends’ couches for a time. I’ve experienced what it is like to not be able to make ends meet.
I’ve also experienced an unbelievable community of people coming together across all these different lines who are building power. Even in all of those places where an emergency of poverty and inequality is happening, you also have the emergence of powerful movements of people, coming forward and saying our backs are against the wall and all we can do is push.
Committing oneself to ending one’s own poverty and their family’s poverty but also constructing a society where no one goes poor and hungry. To me, what’s been amazing and empowering over the last 25 years is I’ve been involved in a very grassroots movement, led by people who are experiencing poverty and homelessness and inequality, and I have seen the power and the possibility of true change that actually comes from those same communities.
Merzbach: What does success look like for this campaign?
Theoharis: A powerful movement. Our goals in the campaign are to shift the narrative and to build power, and those will be our goals until we are able to fully achieve them. As long as we can go through an electoral season, like we’re going through now, like we went through in 2016, and the issues of poverty are barely expressed or discussed. As long as we can go through a pandemic in this rich nation that we handle far worse than any other country in the world because of the levels of poverty and inequality that we want to deny even exist. Until we stop blaming immigrants and people of color and folks that are victims of violence for all of these problems. And until we stop trying to pit people against each other. Until we stop saying this is not the time for us to expand health care even though we’re living in a public health crisis.
We have to shift that narrative. We have to get the nation talking and acting in different ways, and you only do that if you build power. It’s not just in one policy or one policy agenda like we have proposed, but to keep up the pressure, and keep up the unity.
We have this saying, that when you lift from the bottom, everybody rises. So I think, to me, success is lifting from the bottom and people seeing in the society everybody rising.
What I think is so exciting is the kind of real heroes and heroines of our nation that we don’t hear about much, but who are walking out of their job as an essential worker, and are leading protests against police violence, and who are taking life-saving action in this moment of so much debt. I think that there’s something deeply inspiring about that. This is where change comes from. Change comes from those who have little or nothing to lose, and who are out there fighting for life and liberty and dignity.
Street Roots is an award-winning, nonprofit, weekly newspaper focusing on economic, environmental and social justice issues. Our newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity. Learn more about Street Roots. Support your community newspaper by making a one-time or recurring gift today.
© 2020 Street Roots. All rights reserved. | To request permission to reuse content, email editor@streetroots.org or call 503-228-5657, ext. 404.
"gather" - Google News
June 20, 2020 at 08:44PM
https://ift.tt/3hIshs9
Poor and low-income Americans to gather online for a march on Washington - Street Roots News
"gather" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2Sqdbwp
https://ift.tt/2Yjhqxs
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Poor and low-income Americans to gather online for a march on Washington - Street Roots News"
Post a Comment