A New Poor People’s

Campaign for Today

“There are millions of poor people in this country with very little, or even nothing to lose. If they can be helped to take action together, they will do so with a freedom and a power that will be a new and unsettling force in

our complacent national life.” – Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Photo © Resa Sunshine

We live in a time of profound crisis, a time where nearly all systems and institutions fundamental to society—political, economic, social and religious—at best fail to meet people’s needs and at worst cause widespread suffering. Poverty and econom-ic insecurity are pervasive, with half of the world’s population living on less than $2.50 per day and half of the US population living below twice the poverty line. We live without adequate health care, housing, food, education, utilities and employment. We are overwhelmed by severe racial, ethnic, and gender discrimination and division. Climate change is wreaking havoc, impacting the poorest and most vulnerable first. And we have seen a steady increase in war and violent conflicts which have left millions of poor people dead, displaced, and dispossessed. Rev. Dr. King realized that these evils are intercon-nected and must be addressed accordingly.

At the same time we have seen the development of a newly globalized ruling elite and power struc-ture that has created the globalized political, eco-nomic, and social systems that produce poverty today. We are experiencing a profound economic crisis that is worldwide and has revealed the fun-damental weakness in our global economic order: although we have the technical means to produce an unheard of abundance, we continue to witness a massive expansion of poverty and deepening eco-nomic inequality.

There should be no poverty when there is plenty; there should be no abandonment amidst abun-dance. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. argued,

There is nothing new about poverty. What is new, however, is that we now have the re-sources to get rid of it… Why should there be hunger and privation in any land, in any city, at any table, when [human beings have] the resources and the scientific know-how to pro-vide all [people] with the basic necessities of life?… There is no deficit in human resourc-es, the deficit is in human will…The time has come for an all-out war against poverty.

Fighting backWhile crisises of this scale and depth have dealt severe blows to the global struggle for human dig-nity and rights, they have also unleashed new and powerful possibilities for change. We are seeing growing resistance led by people who are organiz-ing and fighting for their lives, their rights and their deepest values. We are fighting on many fronts of this struggle, including for good affordable homes, water, nutritious food, health, and education, for racial, gender and LGBTQ justice, for a humane im-migration system and an end to mass incarceration, for living wages and good jobs, against police bru-tality and militarization, for a healthy environment,

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for peace, and for a more genuine democracy. We look to the example of the Forward Together/Moral Mondays movement in North Carolina, the struggle against water shut-offs in Detroit, the campaigns in Vermont, Maine, Pennsylvania, and Maryland to make healthcare a human right, and many others which show the power that comes when we’re able to see all the problems our communities are facing as inter-connected and organize on that basis.

We celebrate and draw inspiration from the gains of struggles led by those most directly affected. Yet we are all also painfully aware of the limits of our victories as overall conditions continue to worsen. There is a growing need and yearning to connect our often isolated battles and begin creating a broader and deeper social movement with the power and vision to take on not just the rotten fruits of poverty, inequality, and oppression but the national and global systems and structures that produce them. It was a vision of just such a transformative movement that led King to call for a Poor People’s Campaign. It is the same urgent need today that leads to the call for a new Poor People’s Campaign to abolish poverty.

The power of a movement led by the poorThe poor and dispossessed have come to embody all the major injustices of our time. This gives us the ability to provide a rallying point for an even broader and more powerful social movement. Far from putting aside the immediate problems we’re facing and struggles we’re waging, such a move-ment would strengthen our different struggles by recognizing them as inter-connected, inseparable and central to the fight to end poverty and create a moral and just society. The leading role of the poor in these struggles is critical to building this move-ment. History teaches us that a successful move-

ments’ essential first step is uniting those most af-fected by the problem.

The permanent crisis has raised the most serious questions about the prevailing ideological ortho-doxies which for too long have defined what is “re-alistically” possible in terms of social change. And even those who feel economically secure can see that mass poverty and economic hardship amidst such wealth and productive power is an obscene violation our most sacred values. Part of the power of a movement led by the poor is its ability to win the middle to a project to end poverty for everyone, and away from the rhetoric of “re-building the mid-dle class,” which doesn’t address the root causes of many of our current crises.

The 1968 campaignJust a year before his assassination, at a Southern Christian Leadership Conference staff retreat in May 1967, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said,

I think it is necessary for us to realize that we have moved from the era of civil rights to the era of human rights…[W]hen we see that there must be a radical redistribution of eco-nomic and political power, then we see that for the last twelve years we have been in a reform movement…That after Selma and the Voting Rights Bill, we moved into a new era, which must be an era of revolution…In short, we have moved into an era where we are called upon to raise certain basic questions about the whole society.

Later that year, in December 1967, King announced the plan to bring together poor people from across the country for a new march on Washington. This march was to demand better jobs, better homes, better education—better lives than the ones they were living. King saw that poverty was not just an-other issue and that poor people were not a special interest group. Throughout his many speeches in the last year of his life, he held up the potential of the poor to come together to transform the whole of society. He knew that for the load of poverty to be lifted, the thinking and behavior of a critical mass of the American people would have to be changed.

To accomplish this change of consciousness a “new and unsettling force” had to be formed. The poor would have to organize to take action together around our immediate and basic needs. In doing so we could become a powerful social and political force capable of changing the terms of how pover-

Celebration of leaders by Brazil’s Movimento dos Tra-balhadores Rurais Sem Terra (Landless Workers’ Movement).

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ty is understood and dispelling the myths and ste-reotypes that uphold mass complacency and leave the root causes of poverty intact. He described this force as a multi-racial “nonviolent army of the poor, a freedom church of the poor.” Although King was assassinated on April 4 of that year, the Poor Peo-ple’s Campaign went forward and included caravans of poor people from across the country converging in Washington, DC to live in a tent city, known as Resurrection City, constructed on the National Mall. The city’s 3,000 residents engaged in public demon-strations around the capitol.

King and the other leaders of the Poor People’s Campaign asked fundamental questions about the contradictions of their day and similar questions are being asked today about the problems of in-equality, power and class,

We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life’s marketplace. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which pro-duces beggars needs restructuring. It means that questions must be raised. And you see, my friends, when you deal with this you begin to ask the question, ‘Who owns the oil?’ You begin to ask the question, ‘Who owns the iron ore?’ You begin to ask the question, ‘Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that’s two-thirds water?’ These are words that must be said.

The unity of the poorKing emphasized the need for poor whites, Blacks, Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans to unite. He asserted that the Poor People’s Campaign would only be successful if the poor could come together across all the obstacles and barriers set up to di-vide us and if they could overcome the attention and resources being diverted because of the US

engagement in the Vietnam War. The night before his assassination, in his “Promised Land” speech, he reminded the people that being disunited only ben-efitted the rich and powerful,

You know, whenever Pharaoh wanted to pro-long the period of slavery in Egypt, he had a favorite, favorite formula for doing it. What was that? He kept the slaves fighting among themselves. But whenever the slaves get to-gether, something happens in Pharaoh’s court, and he cannot hold the slaves in slav-ery. When the slaves get together, that’s the beginning of getting out of slavery.

Throughout history, people in power have em-ployed racism, sexism, and other forms of oppres-sion as part of divide-and-conquer strategies to keep the poor and dispossessed deeply divided. On top of this, many of our immediate struggles today are put in situations where we’re constantly com-peting for funds and attention, which makes it dif-ficult to devote time and energy to confronting our common opposition. This opposition, on the other hand, is fierce, sophisticated, and well-resourced. A Poor People’s Campaign for today requires leaders who are prepared to recognize our current limita-tions, to deepen our analysis of the forces we are up against, and to develop consciousness of the ob-stacles and opportunities that lie ahead.

As King knew and history has repeatedly shown, when the narratives which support this disunity begin to falter and the poor begin to forge unity through recognition of our common interest, the possibility of social transformation moves dramat-ically closer to reality. This is the power of a move-ment led by the poor, and this is why the idea of uniting the poor was such a threat in 1968. It is why it still is today, nationally and globally.

Leaders from Safe Harbor, a housing development built for Katrina survivors, are joined by a delegation of the Poor Peo-

ple’s Campaign to deliver a letter to city hall demanding an end to evictions after rents tripled. Photo by Jose Vasquez.

Resurrection City, Washington, D.C., 1968

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Get InvolvedA lesson learned from history is that a campaign on the scale called for by the current crisis cannot be launched by, or belong to, a few leaders or organi-zations. What is needed is a movement that reflects the needs, concerns, experiences, and demands of the diverse struggles taking place in communi-ties large and small across the country and around the globe. The first stage is working to build on the struggles now taking place, strengthening their con-nections to produce the unity that alone can move us from merely reacting to different disasters to transforming society.

Everywhere there are unsung saints in the trenches fighting back every way we can. In big cities, small towns, and rural areas, in churches and other reli-gious communities, in schools, labor organizations, and community groups all over the country and the world, the poor and dispossessed are already taking action to put the absolute sacredness of human life at the center of our society. Too often, however, we just don’t know about each other. If we’re able to overcome our isolation, we can strengthen and be-gin to unite our different struggles.

• Tell us about the struggles your communi-ty is facing and the battles you’re waging. Email us to let us know what you think about the Poor People’s Campaign and share any your ideas about how to proceed in this first phase.

• Endorse the call for a new Poor People’s Campaign for today as an individual or or-ganization.

• Help spread the word by sharing the web-site with other leaders and organizations.

• Join monthly national Poor People’s Cam-paign organizing calls and online seminars to connect with leaders and organizations and find out more about struggles and communities across the country and world. Past calls have focused on the the situation in the Gulf Coast with the aftermath of Ka-trina and the BP Oil Spill, the water shut-off crisis in Detroit, homelessness in the Pacific Northwest, the Moral Mondays Movement in North Carolina and the campaigns being waged in different states to make health-care a human right. Email us for the next date.

Who is endorsing the Call for a New

Poor People’s Campaign?

Visit www.PoorPeoplesCampaign.org to see updates to this growing list and to add your name.

Alabama Center for Rural EnterpriseAlabama Multi-Cultural Fisher & Seafood Worker-Owned

CooperativeAlabama Save OurSelves CoalitionAlabama’s Young, Black and Green

Arise for Social JusticeThe Assembly to End Poverty

Rev. Dr. William J Barber, IIBorder Network for Human Rights

Chaplains on the HarborCoalition Against Corporate Higher Education

Committee on US-Latin American Relations Defend Job Philippines

Earth News ChannelEbenezer Baptist Church

Equal Justice InitiativeFaith in New York

Food and Water WatchFood Bank of the Southern Tier

The George Wiley CenterHighlander Research & Education Center

Iraq Veterans Against the WarJudson Memorial Church

The Kairos Center Labor Religion Coalition of New York State

Media Mobilizing ProjectMercy Junction Justice and Peace Center

The Micah InstituteMichigan Welfare Rights Organization

National Fisheries Solidarity Movement (Sri Lanka)National Union of Domestic Employees

(Trinidad and Tobego)New Jersey Communities United

On Earth PeacePeople’s History of Elkhart

The People’s Movement Against POSCO (India)Picture the Homeless

Put People First PASankofa

Dr. Vandana Shiva & Navdanya Social Welfare Action Alliance

Southern Maine Workers’ CenterStudent Labor Action Movement - NYU

T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human RightsUnion Theological Seminary

United Workers of Baltimore CityUS Human Rights NetworkVermont Workers’ Center

Veterans for PeaceRev. Dr. Raphael G. Warnock

World Student Christian Federation N. AmericaWRFG 89.3 FM - Community Radio AtlantaBob Zellner (SNCC/North Carolina NAACP)

www.PoorPeoplesCampaign.org NewPoorPeoplesCampaign@gmail.com

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