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liz theoharis
'We Are a Resurrection': Poor People's Campaign Rallies for Low-Wage Voters in DC
"There will be no democracy worth saving if it doesn't lift the lives of poor and low-wage people all over this world," one speaker said.
Jun 30, 2024
Thousands of poor and low-wage workers and their supporters from religious, labor, and social justice organizations rallied in Washington, D.C. on Saturday and pledged to "break the silence about poverty" and mobilize 15 million poor and low-income voters ahead of the November 2024 election.
The Mass Poor People's and Low Wage Workers' Assembly and Moral March on Washington, D.C. and to the Polls was hosted by the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, which hopes to pressure politicians to embrace a 17-point agenda that prioritizes the well-being of the poor and working class over funding for war and militarism.
"We came here today to represent America's largest potential swing vote: poor and low-wage people who make this country work," Bishop William J. Barber II, co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign and president and senior lecturer of Repairers of the Breach, wrote on social media after the event.
Speaking at the rally, which took place at Third and Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest and began at 10:00 am ET, Barber emphasized the potential power of the poor as a voting block. He said that poor people represent 30% of the electorate and 40% in swing states.
"Every state where the margin of victory was within 3%, poor and low-wage voters make up over 43% of the electorate," Barber said.
He added that in crucial battleground states Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia, the result of the 2020 election was determined by 178,000 votes, yet more than six million poor people in those states did not vote at all.
"Those most impacted by injustice, organizing together, mobilizing together, and voting together can force the changes that we know we need that will be good for everybody."
"The No. 1 reason they did not vote is they said nobody talked to them," Barber said. "Well, there comes a time when people don't talk to you, you've got to make them talk to you."
That is exactly what the Poor People's Campaign is trying to do. In addition to reaching out to 15 million low-income infrequent voters, Barber said the campaign planned to deliver a statement to the major news networks on Saturday.
"We don't care what kind of debate you have if you don't have a debate that asks candidates where they stand on living wages and labor and healthcare, that's the failure," Barber said.
Barber added that the movement would also deliver a statement to the Democratic and Republican National Conventions saying, "If you want these votes, then you have to talk to us, not about what you've done, but what you're going to do in the days to come, because our votes must rise."
Barber and other speakers argued for putting the concerns of the poor and low-income at the center of national politics.
"There will be no democracy worth saving if it doesn't lift the lives of poor and low-wage people all over this world," Barber said. "This is not a moment, this is a movement that must rise until we lift this nation from the bottom so that everybody rises."
Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign and director of the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice, said: "Those most impacted by injustice, organizing together, mobilizing together, and voting together can force the changes that we know we need that will be good for everybody."
She argued that putting the poor at the center of the struggle for democracy "is what can save this nation."
"We say poverty no more. We demand justice for the poor," she concluded. "Because everybody has got a right to live."
On social media, Barber encouraged others to sign on to the movement's pledge.
"It's time to make our voices heard," Barber wrote. "We call on people of moral conscience to join us by pledging to be a part of this mobilization effort. Together, we can wake the sleeping giant of poor and low-wage voters. We are a resurrection, not an insurrection!"
The movement's 17-point agenda includes calls for abolishing poverty as the fourth leading cause of death in the U.S.; ensuring economic justice policies such as a living wage, labor rights, affordable housing, and universal healthcare; enshrining women's and immigrants' rights; protecting the environment and climate; ending gun violence and domestic extremism; and negotiating a cease-fire in Gaza and limiting the war economy.
In addition, Barber and other speakers responded to political developments over the past week, including concerns about U.S. President Joe Biden's performance in a debate against former President Donald Trump Thursday night.
Barber criticized the media for focusing on issues like Biden's stutter or Trump's sexual indiscretions rather than the bread-and-butter issues that matter to voters.
"In my tradition, Moses stuttered, but he brought down Pharaoh," Barber said at the rally. "Jeremiah had depression, but he stood up for justice. Jesus was acquainted with sorrow. Harriet Tubman had epilepsy. Folks are getting caught up on how a candidate walks—well, let me tell you, I have trouble walking, but I know how to walk toward justice."
Barber continued: "We say to the media, this election is not about foolish things. It is about whether we will have democracy. And it is not about one candidate; it is about the people mobilizing and organizing, and you will not drive us to despair."
Participants also spoke out against the Supreme Court's decision on Friday in City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson that cities can enforce bans on sleeping outside in public even if they are not able to provide shelter space for unhoused individuals.
"A Supreme Court that says you can send somebody to jail for not having a home, you can send them to jail for sleeping, but then they turn around and say those with money can have unprecedented power in our election, that is too low down for a nation," Barber said.
Theoharis agreed.
"It is wrong for the highest court in the land to criminalize homelessness, to rule that you cannot breathe in public on a bench, in your car, or in a park if you do not have a home," Theoharis said.
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Poor People's Campaign Plans June 29 Mass Assembly, March in DC
"This is a crisis moment for our democracy," said one campaigner. "We need for our political leaders to become moral leaders and take seriously the needs and priorities of the millions of people struggling simply to survive."
Apr 29, 2024
Leaders of the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival on Monday announced plans for the Mass Poor People & Low-Wage Workers' Assembly & Moral March in Washington, D.C. on June 29, just over four months before the U.S. elections.
The aim of the assembly and march is to "mobilize the one-third of the U.S. electorate who are poor and low-wage infrequent voters" as well as to pressure political leaders to embrace a 17-point agenda during the 2024 election cycle and beyond.
"It does not stand to reason—morally, economically, or politically—that in the richest nation in the history of the world, 800 people die every day from poverty and low wealth," declared Bishop William J. Barber II, co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign and president and senior lecturer of Repairers of the Breach. "Politicians then made the conscious choice to increase poverty to where it was before—an unconscionable reminder that mass poverty is a political choice, not an inevitable law of nature."
"We are here to say we must restore the moral conscience of this nation, and elect leaders across the country who will make different choices—not to raise poverty, but to lower it; not to give out tax breaks to wealthy corporations, but to those who are struggling to make ends meet," he continued. "These are the priorities of one-third of the U.S. electorate, and any candidate interested in activating these voters must speak to our issues and our values."
The agenda, revealed during the campaign's Monday press conference, is:
- Abolishing poverty as the fourth-leading cause of death in the U.S.
- A living minimum wage of at least $15+/hour (indexed for inflation)
- Full and expanded voting rights
- No more voter suppression
- Guaranteed workers' rights and labor rights
- Healthcare for all
- Affordable, adequate housing
- Strong social welfare and safety net programs
- An end to gun violence, profit, and proliferation
- Fully protected women's rights
- Environmental justice that secures clean air and water
- Justice for all Indigenous nations
- Fully funded public education
- Just immigration laws
- Addressing militarism and the war economy
- Standing for peace not war; an immediate cease-fire in Gaza that allows humanitarian relief, the release of all hostages, and peace with justice to be pursued; and an end to genocide around the world
- An end to hate, division, and the extremist political agenda
"We are a resurrection of the unheard voices in this democracy, not an insurrection," said Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign and director of the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice. "After years of historic union drives and grassroots organizing, we are demonstrating our power at the polls in 2024. We will elect leaders with the courage to abolish poverty, raise wages, safeguard voting rights, and meet the basic needs of struggling families."
In addition to Theoharis and Barber's groups, supporters of the assembly and march include the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), Christian Church Disciples of Christ, Common Cause, Fellowship of Affirming Ministries, Good Trouble, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, Make It Plain, National Council of Churches, National Council of Jewish Women, Service Employees International Union, and Union of Southern Service Workers.
"Workers' rights, civil rights, and human rights are on the ballot this election. American voters will decide: Do we want to stay the course and keep on this path toward a more compassionate government or revert back to this morally bankrupt nation?" said Fred Redmond, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO. "The American labor movement is committed to registering and mobilizing union members and union families around the mass mobilization on June 29. We're going to elect lawmakers who will advocate for workers and poor people to elect leaders who will put people over profits, protect our democracy, and advance worker and civil and human rights."
In addition to choosing between Democratic President Joe Biden and former Republican President Donald Trump, U.S. voters in November will decide which party controls each house of Congress. There will also be various consequential local and state elections, including ballot measures to protect key rights such as access to abortion care.
"This is a crisis moment for our democracy," stressed Rosalyn Pelles, a senior advisor to the Poor People's Campaign. "In order for our nation not to continue down the path of autocracy, we need for our political leaders to become moral leaders and take seriously the needs and priorities of the millions of people struggling simply to survive."
"Congress must lead, by bringing forward comprehensive legislation to restore the child tax credit and raise the minimum wage," Pelles argued. "The media must do more, by covering the experiences of people struggling to get by, not just the words and whims of the wealthy and powerful. And the White House must treat poverty like the crisis it is, if this administration is serious about saving our democracy. We all must act, and that is what June 29th is all about."
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Poor People's Campaign Vows to 'Wake the Sleeping Giant' of Low-Income Voters
"Forty-seven percent of the voters are poor or low-wage," said one activist. "Getting that vote in is very important."
Feb 05, 2024
The Poor People's Campaign on Monday launched a 42-week nationwide mobilization of poor and low-income Americans to "wake the sleeping giant" of a voting bloc with the potential to determine the outcome of the 2024 elections.
"It is time for a resurrection and not an insurrection," Poor People's Campaign co-chair Rev. Dr. William Barber II said during a press conference in Washington, D.C. "We must engage poor and low-wealth people to change the political landscape."
"For far too long extremists have blamed poor people and low-wage people for their plight, while moderates too often have ignored poor people, appealing instead to the so-called middle class," he continued. "Meanwhile, poor and low-income people have become nearly half of this country and we are here today to make one thing clear: Poor and low-wage brothers and sisters have the power to determine and decide the 2024 elections and elections beyond."
"Economic justice and saving this democracy are deeply connected."
Poor People's Campaign co-chair Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis stressed that "economic justice and saving this democracy are deeply connected."
"In this rich nation that has the wherewithal to end poverty tomorrow where there's the political will, we must not overlook the voices and votes of poor and low-income people," she added. "We are mobilizing and organizing, registering and educating people for a movement that votes... for healthcare and debt cancellation. Votes for living wages and strong anti-poverty programs. Votes for fair taxes and demilitarization of our communities and our world. Votes for immigrant rights and more."
Democratic pollster Celinda Lake said at the press conference: "In 2024, the election is going to be about mobilization... Democrats have an enthusiasm gap today and the progressive alliance and Democrats have fissures within their constituencies that make getting out the vote even more important."
"The biggest bloc of potential voters by far is low-income, low-wage voters," Lake noted. "Where the margin of victory is projected to be less than 3% in 2024, 30-45% of the voters are low-wage voters or low-income families... The turnout among low-wage voters and low-income voters today is... 20-22% below the average turnout. This is a huge bloc of voters, and it is a bloc of voters that votes 58-60%—at minimum—progressive, no matter how conservative the state."
"You're talking about a huge number—a game-changing number—of voters," she added.
The campaign's main scheduled events are a Mass Poor People's & Low-Wage Workers' Moral March to State House Assemblies on March 2 and a rally and march in Washington, D.C. on June 15.
"I have been struggling to pay my bills since I've been working at 16 years old. I work full time, 64 hours a week, seven days a week," said Beth Schafer of Raise Up for $15 during a video promoting the new campaign. "I am exhausted."
Crow Roberts, an organizer with the Indiana Poor People's Campaign, said in the video that "our government finds it necessary to ban abortion to say that they are saving our children, but more children die as a result of poverty in this country."
Guadalupe de la Cruz of the Florida Poor People's Campaign asserted that "we should not be cornered and forced to choose between one necessity or another."
Speaking at the press conference, Alabama activist Linda Burns said that "for three years I worked the assembly line at Amazon in Bessemer, Alabama. The work was grueling. We were expected to work like robots, moving like 1,000 pieces per hour."
"I got badly injured. My left arm," she continued. "I had two surgeries. I had to get a third surgery, but I didn't have no more insurance. Amazon, they cut my insurance off a year after. They let me go last October."
"Amazon let me go because I was helping organize the union," said Burns. "We didn't get the union in Alabama but I'm gonna do everything in my power to stand in solidarity. Organizing the union showed me just how many people were in the same situation I was. Not just in Alabama, but all over the world."
"Forty-seven percent of the voters are poor or low-wage. Getting that vote in is very important," she added. "We cannot settle for less, we've got to stand up for our rights. We are forward together—not one step back."
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On the Poor. And War.
For years, our leaders have invoked the myth of scarcity to justify inaction when it comes to widespread poverty, growing debt, and rising inequality in the United States. Now, some of them are calling for the spending of billions of dollars to functionally fund the bombardment and occupation of impoverished Gaza.
Nov 06, 2023
On September 19, 2001, eight days after 9/11, as the leaders of both parties were already pounding a frenzied drumbeat of war, a diverse group of concerned Americans released a warning about the long-term consequences of a military response. Among them were veteran civil rights activists, faith leaders, and public intellectuals, including Rosa Parks, Harry Belafonte, and Palestinian-American Edward Said. Rare public opponents of the drive to war at the time, they wrote with level-headed clarity:
“We foresee that a military response would not end the terror. Rather, it would spark a cycle of escalating violence, the loss of innocent lives, and new acts of terrorism… Our best chance for preventing such devastating acts of terror is to act decisively and cooperatively as part of a community of nations within the framework of international law… and work for justice at home and abroad.”
Twenty-three years and more than two wars later, this statement reads as a tragic footnote to America’s Global War on Terror that left an entire region of the planet immiserated. It contributed to the direct and indirect deaths of close to 4.5 million people, while costing Americans almost $9 trillion and counting.
The situation is certainly different today. Still, over the last few weeks, those prophetic words, now 22 years old, have been haunting me, as the U.S. war machine kicks into ever higher gear following the horrific Hamas massacre of Israeli civilians and the brutal intensification of the decades-long Israeli siege of civilians in Gaza. Sadly, the words and actions of our nation’s leaders have revealed a staggering, even willful, historical amnesia about the disastrous repercussions of America’s twenty-first-century war-mongering.
Case in point: recently, the United States was the only nation to veto the U.N. Security Council resolution calling for “humanitarian pauses” to deliver life-saving aid to Palestinians in Gaza. Instead, all but a few members of Congress are lining up to support billions more in military aid for Israel and the further mobilization of our armed forces in the Middle East. These moves, experts say, may only accelerate wider regional conflict (something we are already seeing glimmers of vis-à-vis Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen) at a time of increasingly profound global instability. In the last few weeks, the U.S. Navy has “assembled one of the greatest concentrations of power in the Eastern Mediterranean in 40 years,” while the Department of Defense is readying thousands of troops for possible deployment. Meanwhile, college administrators are suggesting student-reservists be prepared in case they get called up in the coming weeks.
Amid this frenzy of American bluster and brawn, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees reports that Gaza is “fast becoming a hell hole,” riddled with death, disease, starvation, thirst, and displacement. Hundreds of scholars of international law and conflict studies have warned that the Israeli military may already have launched a “potential genocide” of Gazans. At the same time, within Israel, citizen-militias, armed by the far-right minister of national security, have escalated violent attacks on Palestinians, only worsened by the acts of armed Israeli settlers on the West Bank protected by that very military.
Finally allowing a tiny amount of aid across the Egypt-Gaza border, after shutting down all food, water, and fuel for Gaza, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant made it clear just how much power the United States wields over this unfolding humanitarian crisis. “The Americans insisted,” he reported, “and we are not in a place where we can refuse them. We rely on them for planes and military equipment. What are we supposed to do? Tell them no?”
As Gallant implied, the U.S. could use its influence not only to demand far more aid for Gazans, but to compel quite a different course of action. There should, after all, be no contradiction between condemning Hamas for its heinous slaughter in the south of Israel and denouncing Israel for its decades-old dispossession and oppression of the Palestinian people and its now-indiscriminate killing and destruction in Gaza. There need be no contradiction between decrying terrorism and demanding diplomacy over violence. In truth, the Biden administration could use every non-military tool at its disposal to pressure both Hamas and Israel to pursue an immediate ceasefire, the full release of all hostages, and whatever humanitarian assistance is now needed.
If only, rather than further militarizing the region or questioning the death toll in Gaza, the Biden administration were to focus on making this most recent and ever more ominous crisis a final turning point, not for yet more brutality, but for a long-term political solution focused on achieving real peace, human rights, and equality for everyone in the region. In this moment of grief and rage, when tensions are at a fever pitch and the wheel of history is turning around us, it’s time to demand peace above all else.
The Cruel Manipulation of the Poor
While the U.S. government refuses to use its considerable power as leverage for peace, ordinary Americans seem to know better. Unlike the days after 9/11, recent polls suggest that a majority of Americans oppose sending more weapons to Israel and support delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza, including a majority of people under the age of 44, as well as a majority of Democrats and independents and a significant minority of Republicans. While Representative Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian-American in Congress, was made a pariah and is in the process of being censured by some of her colleagues after her plea for a ceasefire, she actually represents the popular will of a significant portion of the public.
And that, in turn, represents a generational shift from even a decade or two ago. In the wake of this country’s disastrous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as dozens of other military conflicts globally, many Americans, especially Millennials and Gen Zers, see the U.S. military less as a defender of democracy than as a purveyor of death and chaos. Nearly second-by-second online coverage of the Israeli bombing campaign is offering Americans an unprecedented view into the collective punishment of more than two million Gazans, half of them 18 or younger. (Now, with limited Internet and communications, it’s unclear how word of what’s happening in Gaza will continue to get out.) Add to that the slow-burning pain that has marked life in the United States over the last 15 years — the Great Recession, the Covid-19 economic shock, the climate crisis, and the modern movement for racial justice — and the reasons for such a relatively widespread urge for peace become clearer.
Today, half of all Americans are either impoverished or one emergency away from economic ruin. As younger generations face what often feels like a dead-end future, there’s a growing sense among those I speak to (as well as older folks) that the government has abandoned them. At a moment when the Republicans (and some Democrats) argue that we can’t afford universal healthcare or genuine living wages, the military budget for 2023 is $858 billion and the Pentagon still maintains 750 military bases globally. Last week, without a touch of irony, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who claimed last year that student debt relief would hurt the economy, insisted that the U.S. can “certainly afford two wars.”
Millions of us tuned into President Biden’s Oval Office speech on his return from Israel, only the second of his presidency. There, he asked Congress to earmark yet another $100 billion mainly for American military aid to Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan (a boon to the war-profiteering weapons makers whose CEOs will grow even richer thanks to those new contracts). Just a year after Congress killed the Expanded Child Tax Credit, which had cut official child poverty in half, Biden’s speech represented a further pivot away from socially beneficial policymaking and toward further strengthening of the ravenous engine of our war economy. After the speech, the Nation‘s Katrina vanden Heuvel offered this compelling instant commentary: “Biden tonight rolled out a version of twenty-first-century military Keynesianism. Let’s call his policy just that. No more Bidenomics. And it consigns the U.S. to endless militarization of foreign policy.”
A decision to organize our economy yet more around war will also mean the further militarization of domestic policy, with dire consequences for poor and low-income people. Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., once called such steps the “cruel manipulation of the poor,” a phrase he coined as part of his denunciation of the Vietnam War in the late 1960s. King was then thinking about the American soldiers fighting and dying in Vietnam “on the side of the wealthy, and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor.”
Today, a similar “cruel manipulation” is playing out. For years, our leaders have invoked the myth of scarcity to justify inaction when it comes to widespread poverty, growing debt, and rising inequality in the United States. Now, some of them are calling for the spending of billions of dollars to functionally fund the bombardment and occupation of impoverished Gaza and a violent Israeli clampdown in the West Bank, not to speak of the possibility of a wider set of Middle Eastern wars. However, polling numbers suggest that a surprising number of Americans have seen through the fog of war and are perhaps coming to believe that our nation’s abundance should be used not as a tool of death but as a lifeline for poor and struggling people at home and abroad.
Not in Our Name
In a time of stifling darkness, one bright light over the last weeks has been the eruption of non-violent, pro-peace protests across the world. In Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Europe, hundreds of thousands of people have hit the streets to demand a ceasefire, including possibly half a million people in London. Here in the U.S., tens of thousands of Americans have followed suit in dozens of cities, from New York to Washington, D.C., Chicago to San Francisco. No less important, those protest marches have been both multi-racial and multi-generational, much like the 2020 uprisings for Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and the countless other Black lives lost to police brutality.
Recently, close friends and colleagues sent me photos from a march in Washington where Jewish protesters demanded a ceasefire and held up signs with heartrending slogans like “Not in My Name,” “Ceasefire Now,” and “My Grief Is Not Your Weapon.” Ultimately, close to 400 people, including numerous rabbis, were arrested as they peacefully sang and prayed in a congressional office building, while David Friedman, ambassador to Israel under President Trump, hatefully tweeted: “Any American Jew attending this rally is not a Jew — yes I said it!” Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia ludicrously claimed that they were leading an insurrection.
Two days later, my organization, the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice, cosponsored a pro-peace march that drew a large crowd of Palestinians and Muslim-American families. At noon, about 500 protesters, a gorgeous, multicolored sea of humanity participated in the Jumma call to prayer in front of the U.S. Capitol. The following week, folks co-organized a pray-in at New York Representative Hakeem Jeffries’s office, using the phrase “ceasefire is the moral choice.” Faith and movement leaders offered prayers from their various religious traditions and displayed the names of people killed so far.
On October 27th, as Israel expanded its ground invasion of Gaza, I joined thousands of people in Grand Central Station to call for a #CeasefireNow, one of the largest demonstrations in New York since this most recent conflict broke out. Protests continued all week. And on November 4th, there was a mass rally and march in Washington, D.C., to call for an end to war and support the rights of Palestinians, with hundreds of organizations bridging a diversity of views and voices to plead for peace.
Those marches were an inspiring indication of the broad coalition of Americans who desperately want to prevent genocide in Gaza and dream of lasting peace and freedom in Israel/Palestine. At the lead are Palestinians and Jews who refuse to be used as pawns and prop-pieces by military hawks. Alongside them are many Americans all too aware that, though they might not be directly affected by the nightmarish events now unfolding in the Middle East, they are still implicated in the growing violence there thanks to their tax dollars and the actions of our government. Together, we are collectively crying out: “Not in Our Name.”
Such marches undoubtedly represent the largest antiwar mobilization since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and are weaving together diverse communities — young and old, Black, Brown, and White, Muslim, Jewish, and Christian, poor and working-class — in a way that should prove encouraging indeed for a growing peace movement. Right now, there are new alliances and relationships being forged that will undoubtedly endure for years to come.
Yes, this remains a small victory in what’s likely to prove a terrifying global crisis, but it is a victory nonetheless.
Roses Dressed in Black
The last few weeks have resurrected traumatic memories for many Jews and Palestinians globally — of the Holocaust, the Nakba, and the long history of Islamophobia, anti-Arab hate, anti-Jewish violence, and antisemitism. For many of us who are not Palestinian or Jewish, the recent mass death and violence have also triggered our own painful reckonings with the past.
I’m a descendant of Armenian genocide survivors. When I was a child growing up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, I heard hushed tales of death marches, hunger, lack of water, barricaded roads, and harrowing escapes. Those stories remain etched into my consciousness, a mournful inheritance my dispossessed ancestors handed down.
My great-grandfather, Charles Ozun Artinian, fled his home in what is now Turkey’s Seyhan River valley after the 1909 Adana Massacre in which Ottoman militants killed 25,000 Armenian Christians. Part of his family escaped over the Caucasus Mountains into Western Europe. They then traveled halfway across the world to Argentina, because so many other nations, including the United States, had closed their borders to Armenian refugees and would only open them years later.
As he was fleeing Adana, Charles wrote a poem, one of the few surviving long-form poems from the region at the time. It begins:
“In the Seyhan valley there rises a smoke
Roses dressed in black, month of April cried
Cries of sadness and mourning were heard everywhere
Broken hearted and sad, everybody cried…”
My family taught my siblings and me that although the genocide against our people was carried out by the Ottoman Empire, it was made possible by the complicity and indifference of the international community, including the world’s richest and most powerful nations. Right now, the smoke rising over Gaza is suffocating and every additional hour the U.S. enables more bombs to fall and tanks to rumble, more roses will be, as my great-grandfather put it, dressed in black. Not only that, but with the detonation of each new American-made bomb, the conditions for the long-term freedom and safety of both Israelis and Palestinians are blasted ever more into rubble.
Let us honor the memories of our ancestors and finally learn the lesson of their many stolen lives: “Not In Our Name!,” “Peace and Justice for All!” and the pleas from Gaza, including “Ceasefire Now!,” “End the Siege,” “Protect Medical Facilities,” and “Gaza is Home!”
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It's a Poverty Emergency and We Must Act
Lives cut short from poverty and low-wealth is a moral indictment of a society that is abandoning millions amid abundance.
Oct 19, 2023
In the richest country in human history, poverty has become a death sentence. Yes, despite the fact that the United States throws out more food than is needed to feed every hungry person, that the nation spends more and has more cutting edge developments in health care than any other nation, and despite the GDP growing exponentially over the past years, poverty is the fourth largest killer. Poor people can expect to die 12 or 13 years sooner than rich people in the US, with the death rate gap between rich and poor increasing by 570% since 1980.
In a recent series on declining life expectancy, the Washington Post reports that, “The United States is failing at a fundamental mission—keeping people alive.” This new series shows that the US has a significantly lower life expectancy than other nations with similar economic development. The Post continues, “America is increasingly a country of haves and have-nots, measured not just by bank accounts and property values but also by vital signs and grave markers. Dying prematurely, The Post found, has become the most telling measure of the nation’s growing inequality.”
For too long, poverty has been pushed from the national agenda. For too long, corporate profits have been put before people.
This death measurement indeed is telling. It paints a picture of a country with the resources to raise wages, end homelessness, expand health care, and invest in child care and other needed resources to help struggling families but refuses to do so. It demonstrates a society (with Congress as the speartip) that keeps proposing cuts to health care, food assistance, education, and more even after policy experts have shown that such cuts result in suffering and death.
As theologians and preachers, we know this is not just a health crisis (although Medicaid cuts that could throw as many as 24 million off its rolls is most definitely a healthcare emergency of epic proportions). Lives cut short by poverty and low-wealth is a moral indictment of a society that is abandoning millions amid abundance.
In September, the US Census published the most recent poverty numbers. The US Census report marks a significant increase of the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) from 2021 to 2022, nearly doubling child poverty in the most significant growth in child poverty since the SPM was adopted. These numbers show that 41% of the US population is poor or low-income; 135 million people cannot afford a couple hundred dollar emergency. This reality is an emergency, and anyone who claims to value life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness must treat it as such.
This crisis of poverty and low-wealth requires an emergency response. It requires an emergency meeting between poor and low-income leaders, clergy, economists, public policy experts and the president of the United States at the White House to hear stories and solutions to poverty and policy murder.
It is calling us to a season of direct action, including moral assemblies at state capitols across the country, imploring our elected leaders to support an agenda that tackles poverty and other systemic injustices because there are policy solutions to all of these problems. The Third Reconstruction we are building towards is a revival of our constitutional commitment to establish justice, provide for the general welfare, end decades of austerity, and recognize that policies that center the 140 million poor and low-income people in the country are also good economic policies that can heal and transform the nation.
It means we are committing to convene and converge on Washington D.C. on June 15, 2024 for a Mass Poor People’s and Low-Wage Workers Assembly and Moral March on Washington. And it compels a massive get out the vote effort to enliven and enlarge the electorate of poor and low-wealth voters who hold the power to shift the political calculus of the nation and vote for truth and life and love and justice.
For too long, poverty has been pushed from the national agenda. For too long, corporate profits have been put before people. For too long, we have heard the false narrative that poverty may be unfortunate but inevitable and poor people are to blame for their poverty and if people just worked harder and prayed more, they would not be poor anymore. But as Ms. Yara Allen writes in the anthem of our movement, The Poor People's Campaign, “Somebody’s been hurting our people, people are dying from poverty and policy murder, it’s gone on for too long, and we won’t be silent anymore.”
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Abandoning the Poor Amid So Much Abundance
In addition to the 38 million Americans now living in official poverty, there are at least 95 million to 105 million living in a state of chronic economic precariousness, just one pay cut, health crisis, or eviction from economic ruin.
Oct 10, 2023
On the island of Manhattan, where I live, skyscrapers multiply like metal weeds, a vertical invasion of seemingly unstoppable force. For more than a century, they have risen as symbols of wealth and the promise of progress for a city and a nation. In movies and TV shows, those buildings churn with activity, offices full of important people doing work of global significance. The effect is a feeling of economic vitality made real by the sheer scale of the buildings themselves.
In stark contrast to those images of bustling productivity stands an outcropping of tall towers along the southern end of Manhattan’s Central Park. Built in the last 20 years, those ultra-luxury residential complexes make up what is unofficially known as “Billionaires’ Row.” The name is apt, considering that millionaires and billionaires have flocked to those buildings to buy apartments at unimaginably high prices.
In 2021, the penthouse on the 96th floor of 432 Park Avenue was listed at an astonishing $169 million (though its Saudi owner has since slashed the offering price to a mere $130 million). No less astonishing these days, such lavish, sky-high homes often sit empty. Rather than fulfilling any functional role, many serve as nothing more than speculative investments for buyers who hope, one day, to resell them for even higher prices, avoid taxes, or launder dirty money. For some among the super-rich, flush with more money than they know what to do with, Billionaires’ Row is simply an easy place to park their wealth.
Those empty apartments cast a shadow over a city full of people in need of affordable housing and better wages. Reaching from the southern tip of Manhattan into Brooklyn lies the most economically unequal congressional district in the country. To the north, in the Bronx, sprawls the nation’s poorest district. Just last week, the New York Times reported that, based on 2022 census data, “the wealthiest fifth of Manhattanites earned an average household income of $545,549, or more than 53 times as much as the bottom 20 percent, who earned an average of $10,259.”
In New York, where land is a finite resource and real estate determines so much, it is a cruel irony that the richest people in the world are using their capital to literally reach ever higher into the clouds, while back on earth, the average New Yorker, grimly ensconced in reality, lives paycheck to paycheck, navigating a constant storm of food, healthcare, housing, transportation and utility costs.
Abandonment Amid Abundance
Extreme economic inequality, characterized by a small class of the very wealthy and a broad base of poor and low-income people, may be particularly evident in cities like New York, but it’s a fact of life nationwide. In September 2023, the wealth of America’s 748 billionaires rose to $5 trillion, $2.2 trillion more than in 2017, the year the Trump administration passed massive tax changes favoring the rich. The new 2022 census data offers a very different picture of life for the nation’s poor in those same years. In fact, the numbers are eye-popping: between 2021 and 2022 alone, the overall Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) rose by nearly 5%, while child poverty doubled in size.
The U.S. Census Bureau uses two measurements of poverty: the Official Poverty Measure (OPM) and that SPM. The OPM, it’s widely agreed, is shamefully feeble and outdated, while the Supplemental Poverty Measure casts a wider net, catching more of the nuances of impoverishment. Still, even that has its limitations, missing millions of people who flutter precariously just above the official threshold of poverty, constantly at risk of falling below it.
That said, the SPM remains a helpful barometer for this country’s attempts to address poverty. Shailly Gupta-Barnes, my colleague at the Kairos Center and a poverty policy expert, observes that, because the “SPM accounts for family income after taxes and transfers…, it shows the antipoverty effects of some of the largest federal support programs.” Considering that, it’s neither an accident, nor a fluke of the market that the SPM just skyrocketed at an historic rate.
The explanation isn’t even complicated. It’s because a number of highly effective Covid-era, anti-poverty programs were callously cut. (No matter that cases of Covid are again on the rise.) When the newest census figures were released in September 2023, Gupta-Barnes explained, “41% of Americans were poor or low-income in 2022, up significantly since 2021, mainly because of the failure to extend and expand tested anti-poverty programs including the child tax credit, stimulus checks, Medicaid expansion and more.”
The take-away from all of this seems clear enough. When the abundant resources of this society are mobilized to tackle poverty, it decreases; when we undermine those efforts, it increases. The more subtle, but equally important take-away: how we measure poverty has massive implications for how we understand human deprivation in our country. As it happens, tens of millions of people who live in regular economic peril are being made invisible by our very tools for measuring poverty. How, then, can we ever hope to address it in its entirety if we can’t even see the people suffering from its iron grip?
The View from the Bottom
In 2022, the official threshold for poverty was $13,590 per year for one person and $27,750 for a family of four — with about 38 million Americans falling below that threshold. That number alone should shock the conscience of a nation as wealthy and developed as ours. But the truth is that, from the beginning, the official poverty line has been based on an arbitrary and shallow understanding of human need.
First formulated in the 1960s, when President Lyndon Johnson’s administration introduced its War on Poverty, the Official Poverty Measure focuses primarily on access to food for its base line and doesn’t fully take into account other critical expenses like health care, housing, and transportation. It is based on an austere assessment of how much is too little for a person to meet all of his or her needs. Because of its inadequacy, millions of Americans badly in need of support have essentially been erased from the political calculus of poverty. More than half a century later, they still remain so, since the OPM has endured not only as a bureaucratic benchmark but as the authoritative reference point for poverty, influencing our conception of who is poor and, on a policy level, who actually qualifies for a range of public programs.
Since the 1960s, much has changed, even if the official poverty line has remained untouched. The food prices on which it’s based have skyrocketed beyond the rate of inflation, alongside a host of other expenses, including housing, gas, utilities, prescription medicine, college tuition, and now essential costs like internet and cell-phone plans.
Meanwhile, over the last four decades, wage growth has essentially stagnated. Since 1973, wages for the majority of workers have risen by just 9%, while actually falling for significant numbers of lower-income people. Productivity, on the other hand, continues to grow almost exponentially. As a result, workers are making comparatively less than their parents did, even though they may produce more for the economy.
This crisis of low pay is no accident. As a start, over the last 50 years, CEOs have taken ever bigger chunks for themselves out of their workers’ paychecks. In 1965, the average CEO made 21 times what his or her workers did. Today, that figure is 344 times more. The reason for such a dramatic polarization of wages and wealth (as so vividly on display in the current UAW strike) is a half-century of neoliberal policy-making intensely antagonistic to the poor and beneficial for the rich.
Over the decades, our economy has been completely reshaped, transforming the kinds of jobs most of us have and the ways we do them. Today, growing parts of our workforce are automated, non-unionized, low-wage, part-time and/or contracted out, often without benefits like health care, paid sick leave, or retirement plans. No one, therefore, should be surprised to learn that such an increasingly stark division of labor and money is accompanied by an unprecedented $17 trillion in personal debt. (And now, with student debt repayments beginning again on October 1st, there is even more needless suffering for those so poor that their economic value is in the negatives.)
In 1995, the National Academy of Sciences recommended the Supplemental Poverty Measure as a new way of assessing poverty and, in 2011, the Census Bureau began to use the SPM. But even that is insufficient. As Gupta-Barnes explains, “Although a broader and preferred measure, the SPM poverty threshold still remains an incomplete estimate of poverty. For instance, according to the SPM, a four-person household with an income of $30,000 is not poor because they fall above the designated poverty threshold. This means that many households living just above the poverty threshold aren’t counted as poor, even though they will have a hard time meeting their basic needs.”
Indeed, right above the 38 million people in official poverty, there are at least 95 million to 105 million living in a state of chronic economic precariousness, just one pay cut, health crisis, or eviction from economic ruin. In other words, today, the low-wage, laid-off, and locked out can’t easily be separated from people of every walk of life who are being economically downsized and dislocated. The old language of social science bears little resemblance to the reality we now face. When the economically “marginalized” are being discussed, it’s all too easy to imagine small bands of people living in the shadows along the edges of society. Unfortunately, the marginalized are now a near-majority of this country.
Poverty Is a Policy Choice
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed, even paralyzed, by such a reality. No one — billionaires aside — is immune from the dread-inducing gravity of the situation this country finds itself in. But here’s the strange thing: deep in the depths of such a monumental mess, it’s possible to discover genuine hope. For if our reality is human-made, as it surely is, then we also have the power to change it.
Ironically, during the pandemic years, before the poverty numbers rose dramatically again in 2022, it was possible to see a notable and noticeable reduction in the numbers of poor Americans exactly because of decisive government action. In 2021, for example, the Child Tax Credit (CTC) and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) played leading roles in reducing child poverty to the lowest rates since the SPM was created. The protection and expansion of Medicaid and CHIP also helped mitigate food insecurity and hunger. The research firm KKF estimates that enrollment in those anti-poverty programs rose from “23.3 million to nearly 95 million from February 2020 to the end of March 2023.” And millions of families were able to stay in their homes and fight unlawful evictions during the first couple of years of the pandemic thanks to federal and state eviction moratoriums.
Unfortunately, these pandemic-era programs were sold to us as only temporary, emergency measures, though they were commonsensical policies that advanced the interests of millions of people who had been poor before Covid-19 struck. And unfortunately, alongside Democrats like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, congressional Republicans quickly rolled back some of the most striking advances, including letting CTC expire in 2022 (and they continue to advocate for ever greater cuts).
We are now in the midst of what pundits are calling the “great unwinding,” an awkward euphemism for deliberate, brutal reductions to Medicaid expansion in dozens of states. Since April, nearly six million people, including at least 1.2 million children, have been stripped of life-saving Medicaid coverage and estimates suggest that between 15 million and 24 million people may be disenrolled by next spring.
In (harsh) reality, there are at least these two interrelated ways in which poverty is a policy choice. How we choose to define poverty fundamentally shapes how we understand it, while how we govern has enormous consequences for the everyday lives of poor and low-income people. Right now, we’re either getting celebratory messages about the strength of our economy from Democrats or accusatory scapegoating from Republicans. In truth, though, the current bleak reality of poverty is the consequence of decades of neoliberal neglect and animus by both parties.
The pandemic years, sad as they have been, offered a small glimpse of what it would take to confront the needless scourge of poverty in a time of tremendous national wealth. Those investments could have been a first step in launching a full-scale assault on poverty, building off their embryonic success in the pandemic moment.
Instead, the consequences of the rollback of those programs and the threat of yet more cuts brings us to a potential turning point for the nation. Will we continue to condemn tens of millions of us to cruel and unnecessary poverty, while feeding the drive to authoritarianism or even an all-American version of fascism, or will we move swiftly and compassionately to begin lifting the load of poverty and so strengthen the very foundation of our democracy?
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The Poor People's Campaign Continues to Do the Vital Political Work
In the wealthiest country on the planet, there’s no excuse for failing to meet basic needs and ensuring we can all survive and thrive.
Jun 21, 2023
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights leaders launched a Poor People’s Campaign in 1968 to tackle what he called the “Triplets of Evil” — systemic racism, poverty, and militarism. Fifty years later, activists revived this multi-racial fusion movement to carry on the fight against these injustices, as well as the growing scourge of ecological devastation.
In 2018, this modern-day Poor People’s Campaign joined with the Institute for Policy Studies to audit progress in these areas. Our conclusion? By many indicators, from voting rights to mass incarceration to wealth inequality, these systemic problems had deepened since 1968.
With these disturbing facts in hand, the campaign has united poor and low-income people across the country to demand a new moral agenda based on fundamental rights.
Ending these interlocking injustices is the moral thing to do — and it would save resources and make our country stronger in the long run.
This week, the Poor People’s Campaign and the Institute for Policy Studies are taking stock once again with the release of fact sheets that examine the state of poverty and inequality in the country as a whole, as well as extensive data tailored for each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia.
A Moral Poverty Action Congress
The campaign is distributing the materials at a Moral Poverty Action Congress bringing together organizers from more than 30 states in Washington, D.C., for education and advocacy on Capitol Hill.
So where do things stand today, five years after Bishop William J. Barber II and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis launched the modern-day Poor People’s Campaign?
Think about everything that’s happened during this time. A pandemic. The police murder of George Floyd and the explosion of the Black Lives Matter movement. A surge of attacks on voting rights and on the rights of women and LGBTQ+ people. An insurrection at the Capitol. Escalating climate change. And white supremacist efforts to erase our history of systemic racism.
In the face of these and other challenges, the Poor People’s Campaign has built coalitions in more than 40 states that have amplified the voices of impacted communities in the halls of power. They worked with IPS and other allies on a comprehensive guiding vision for the nation that inspired the introduction of a Third Reconstruction Resolution in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2021. They’ve also registered millions of low-income voters, contributing to the highest turnout of low-income voters in history in the 2020 election.
These efforts have contributed to some important steps forward. But in a system where the rules are heavily skewed to favor the rich and big corporations, there have also been steps back.
Key fact sheet highlights
Pandemic relief policies temporarily lifted the load of poverty, proving that poverty in the richest country in the world is a policy choice. But these initiatives ended too soon, resulting in higher rates of economic, food and housing insecurity.
Our most recent data indicate that poor and low-income people make up more than 40 percent of the population in 13 states (California, Mississippi, New Mexico, Florida, Hawaii, New York, Georgia, Alaska, Louisiana, Texas, Nevada, Arkansas, and North Carolina).
With rising inflation, average household debt rose in every state between the last quarters of 2021 and 2022, with a third of all states now having average debt burdens of $50,000 or more.
The lifting of pandemic eviction protections in 2021 put as many as 17 million people at risk of becoming unhoused. As of the beginning of 2023, 7 million households nationwide reported being behind in their rent or mortgage payments. In nearly a third of states, at least 100,000 families were behind on these bills.
The end of pandemic policies that expanded Medicaid access is putting millions of Americans at risk of losing their health care, including over 5 million children, 6.6 million white people, 4.6 million Hispanic/Latino people, 2.2 million Black people, and over 500,000 Asian and Native people.
Extreme heat, storms, and drought are becoming more common, with poor and low-income communities at greatest risk. As a share of their income, poor and low-income households are spending at least 5 times as much on energy costs as average households in all but two U.S. states (Washington and Connecticut).
In the wealthiest country on the planet, there’s no excuse for failing to meet basic needs and ensuring we can all survive and thrive. The fact sheets reveal the number of each state’s resident billionaires, a class of Americans extremely adept at avoiding their fair share of taxes. Georgia, for example, has 88 billionaires while 42.5 percent of the state’s population is poor or low-income.
The fact sheets also include data on taxpayer dollars in each state that are being siphoned from human needs to further bloat our military budget, border control, and prison system. In Alabama, for example, nuclear weapons spending alone could cover the health care costs of 171,573 children.
We all do better when we all do better
Ending these interlocking injustices is the moral thing to do — and it would save resources and make our country stronger in the long run.
The fact sheets point out, for example, that providing permanent safe housing delivers lifelong benefits to children and families at an average cost of $12,800 per person per year, far less than the cost of crisis services for those suffering chronic homelessness.
Increasing resources for poor and low-income households also stimulates the economy much more than making the rich even richer, because these households spend nearly everything they earn while the wealthy can afford to squirrel away their excess cash.
At their Moral Poverty Action Congress, the Poor People’s Campaign is developing strategies to continue to build a moral force that can revive the heart and soul of this democracy and ensure dignity and justice for all. There is clearly much work to be done.
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Poor People's Campaign, Families Demand DOJ Probe of Over 100 West Virginia Jail Deaths
"Poverty or a prison sentence should not be a death sentence," asserted campaign co-chair Bishop William J. Barber II after relatives of inmates who died last year told their loved ones' stories.
Feb 23, 2023
Activists with the Poor People's Campaign and relatives of some of the 13 inmates who died at West Virginia's Southern Regional Jail last year held a press conference Thursday to implore the Biden administration to investigate conditions at the notorious lockup, as well as the deaths of more than 100 prisoners in the state during the last 10 years.
"We're doing this on behalf of the 13 people who have died senselessly, we believe, at the Southern Regional Jail... and on behalf of over 100 more who have died within West Virginia regional jails over the last decade," Bishop William J. Barber II, co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, said at the online conference.
Speaking to Common Dreams by phone after the press conference, Barber said that "we need a full, independent investigation by the Justice Department. We're talking about basic civil rights and human dignity. Give us the truth. Give us justice."
"We need a full, independent investigation by the Justice Department. We're talking about basic civil rights and human dignity. Give us the truth. Give us justice."
"There are too many unanswered questions here," he added. "We're talking about people dying in jail."
In one case, a man jailed at Southern Regional Jail (SRJ) for littering and missing a court date died 81 days after his arrest. In another, a woman died after she was brutally beaten and literally torn apart by inmates looking for drugs in her private parts.
Latasha Williams, whose 37-year-old fiancée Quantez Burks died a day after he was locked up at SRJ for alleged wanton endangerment and obstruction, said she only found out her partner was dead when she called to inquire about posting bond the day after his arrest.
"The magistrate said, 'I hate to tell you this, but he passed away last night at 9:00 pm,'" Williams recounted. "I threw the phone and started crying... and I [said] they lying, it's somebody else, 'cause I just talked to him."
After state officials said the cause of Burks' death was "natural," his loved ones raised $5,000 for an independent autopsy by Pittsburgh forensic pathologist Cyril Wecht, a former president of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences.
"We just felt like there was probably some foul play in it, and that's really what made us decide to get that second autopsy," Burks explained.
"Findings were consistent with being handcuffed while being beaten," she said. "Both of his wrists were broken. He had an arm broken, nose broken, and a leg bone broken. He also had blunt force trauma to his whole body, including his head. He also had a heart attack, which they said was probably caused by the stress his body was put into."
Reacting to Burks' remarks, Barber asserted that "poverty or a prison sentence should not be a death sentence."
"We need an independent federal investigation. We need it now. We need the Justice Department to come in and meet with these families."
"Countless low-income West Virginians of all races... have died under the watch of the state prison and jail system," he continued. "We need an independent federal investigation. We need it now. We need the Justice Department to come in and meet with these families."
"The mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers and family members of those who have died at the hands of our jail system in West Virginia need and deserve answers," Barber added. "We cannot allow our elected leaders to continue to ignore what is unfolding right in front of them."
Barber urged U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Republican Gov. Jim Justice to support an independent federal probe into the "dangerous, inhumane, and unconstitutional conditions in the Southern Regional Jail."
"You don't have video. You don't have body cameras," said Barber. "But you have real lives and real families and tremendous pain and death and people going in for... minor offenses and then family members finding out, sometimes in less than 24 hours, sometimes less than 24 days, that a loved one is dead, dead, dead. And all kinds of questions have gone unanswered."
While the U.S. Department of Homeland Security last year conducted an investigation of conditions at SRJ, critics including attorneys for inmates at the jail called the probe a "sham."
Barber told Common Dreams that "only a full federal investigation, with the DOJ and its power of the federal purse strings," would be sufficient to "give us the truth" and answer the questions of those whose loved ones died at SRJ.
"Systems that investigate themselves are not as thorough, and are prone to cover-ups," he added.
Thursday's press conference came as current and former prisoners filed a new class-action lawsuit this week over conditions at SRJ. The suit alleges that inmates are denied access to drinking water, that they face dangerous overcrowding, mold, human sewage, toilet water, rats, sexual assault, and other violence.
According to WVNS journalist Jessica Farrish, who has reported extensively on the jail:
The suit states that up to 16 mentally ill people are forced inside of an alleged "suicide cell" that measures 120 square feet, and that prison and medical staff allegedly leave them in the cell for days. Attorneys also say jail staff allegedly destroys legal mail sent to inmates, opens inmates' legal mail when they are not present, and photocopies legal mail sent to inmates.
A previous class-action lawsuit filed last year alleges abuse and mistreatment at SRJ.
"Hearing these stories, my heart is breaking," said Rev. Dr. Liz Theoris, co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign. "This drive to criminalize the poor is immoral and poverty and incarceration... should not be a death sentence."
"Enough is enough. This has to stop," she added. "We are calling... on our elected officials and on the DOJ to make a difference. We are calling on Sen. Manchin and Gov. Justice to hear the cries of the families seeking answers and to do what's right."
A state investigation into conditions at SRJ that concluded inmates were lying about abuse was widely dismissed as grossly inadequate.
As an October 2022 editorial in the Register-Herald, a Beckley, West Virginia-based paper, noted:
The state report on conditions at SRJ was produced lickety-split, in about 30 days, by West Virginia Homeland Security Secretary Jeff Sandy, who cooked the books to deny any problems whatsoever at the facility. A high school term paper would have been more revealing—and more credible. Sandy once served as chair of the Regional Jail Board from 2012 to 2016 and now serves in the governor's cabinet.
Yes, the governor directed an insider to conduct a fair and impartial investigation. Even a blind man could see that was never going to happen. As such, the problems at SRJ persist because they have not been meaningfully addressed—and inmates are dying because of it.
Kat Robles, an attorney at the advocacy group Forward Justice, specifically called on the U.S. Justice Department's Civil Rights Division to launch an investigation under the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act, which empowers the DOJ to probe abuse and neglect in prisons and jails, mental health facilities, and other institutions.
"This is an urgent crisis. This is an outrage," said Robles, who added that what's needed is "not just an investigation."
"We want them to meet with community leaders, to meet with families, and to remedy this urgent crisis," she said.
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Dem Leaders Urged to Mark Bloody Sunday by Acting on Voting Rights, Economic Justice
"This is no time for foolishness, photo-ops, and flaky commitments," declares a letter from faith leaders including Bishop William Barber II and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis of the Poor People's Campaign.
Feb 20, 2023
" Selma is sacred ground. It is, in a very real sense, the delivery room where the possibility of a true democracy was born. It is no place to play or to be for political pretense. Either you're serious or not. If you're coming, come on Sunday, the actual day of remembrance. If you're coming, come with a commitment to fight for what these people were willing to give their lives for."
That's the message that faith and rights leaders sent in a Monday letter to U.S. President Joe Biden and members of Congress ahead of the anniversary of Bloody Sunday—when white police officers violently assaulted civil rights advocates, including future Congressman John Lewis (D-Ga.), as they marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Alabama on March 7, 1965.
The sign-on letter is led by the co-chairs of the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival—Bishop William Barber II and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis—along with former Democratic Alabama state Sen. Hank Sanders, Faya Rose Touré, Rev. Mark Thompson, Rebecca Marion, and Rev. Carolyn Foster. It is open for signature on the Repairers of the Breach website.
"#SelmaIsSacredGround, not a place for political pretense."
"This is a critical year in the life of our country," the seven initial signatories wrote. "On the one hand, the president and progressive members of Congress have fought to pass policies that have lifted up Americans in many ways. From Covid relief measures to infrastructure investments to child tax credits that lifted millions of children out of poverty (for a brief moment) to the appointment of the first Black woman Supreme Court Justice, we can celebrate some real progress."
"But, on the other hand, with a Democratic president and control of the House and Senate for two years, Democratic leadership was unable to raise the federal minimum wage," they continued, also noting that a few obstructionist Democrats repeatedly helped Senate Republicans block efforts to restore the Voting Rights Act by supporting the filibuster.
That obstruction, they explained, enabled "regressive legislative bodies across the nation to pass more voter suppression bills than any time since Jim Crow and to go through another round of dangerous redistricting, which nullifies the potential power of progressive voting coalitions by stacking and packing votes in certain districts to predetermine outcomes before any vote is cast."
Highlighting research that shows tens of millions of Americans face some form of voter suppression, the letter leaders argue that if Biden and other politicians plan to visit Selma—which was recently devastated by a tornado—for the Bloody Sunday anniversary, they should "declare that the fight for voting rights and the restoration of what they marched across that bridge for is not over."
The letter also demands urgent action on living wages and investments in rural areas, stressing that millions of people—particularly in Southern states—live "in poverty and low-wealth conditions" and remain "uninsured or underinsured at a time when we have more people on healthcare than ever before," three years into the Covid-19 pandemic.
"Those of us who are planning to be in Selma to honor the struggle for voting rights and economic justice should be willing to protest and engage nonviolently if politicians attempt to do moral harm to the memory and the sacredness of what happened on Bloody Sunday," declares the letter. "This is no time for foolishness, photo-ops, and flaky commitments."
"Let us be clear: To honor the memory of Bloody Sunday is to work for the full restoration of the Voting Rights Act, the passage of the original For the People Act that John Lewis helped to write, not the bill that was watered down by Joe Manchin," the letter continues, calling out the pro-filibuster West Virginia Democrat infamous for thwarting his own party's agenda.
"To commemorate Bloody Sunday," the letter adds, "is to commit to raising of the minimum wage to a living wage, to ensuring that every American has adequate healthcare, and to enacting economic development that touches poor and low-wealth communities."
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'Our Job Is to Pick Up the Baton,' Says Poor People's Campaign on MLK Day
"Today and every day let's honor King as we end racism, poverty, ecological devastation, the denial of healthcare, militarism, and this false narrative of Christian nationalism," said Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis.
Jan 16, 2023
To mark Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday, leaders of a modern iteration of the slain civil rights champion's final campaign called on U.S. politicians from both sides of the aisle—many of whose policies and actions are like those King condemned as the "evil triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism"—to step up and meet the needs of the country's poor and low-income people.
Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival released a video demanding the Biden administration and every member of Congress "meet with poor and low-wealth people, religious leaders, economists, lawyers, and public health specialists to address the systemic policy violence that threatens the soul of our nation."
"When prophets are killed or assassinated, our job is to pick up the baton and continue the work," campaign co-chair Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II said in the video. "Sadly, many will go to King events today and claim to honor the prophet. Elected officials on both sides of the aisle will go while even today, they are standing diametrically opposed to the things he fought for: addressing systemic poverty, addressing racism, ensuring voter protection, just immigration policy, just treatment of Indigenous people, healthcare for all, and dealing with the war economy and militarism."
As they do each year, officials—including Republican lawmakers who voted against an MLK Day holiday, the U.S. government King called "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today," and its agencies like the FBI that tried to destroy King—all took to Twitter to sing his praises.
Poor People's Campaign Petition Congress to Truly Honor MLK Legacy | Press Conferencewww.youtube.com
Rev. Liz Theoharis, also a co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign, said in the video that "this Martin Luther King Day, we must continue a campaign for social, political, and economic rights, not simply commemorate a man. Today and every day let's honor King as we end racism, poverty, ecological devastation, the denial of healthcare, militarism, and this false narrative of Christian nationalism. Let us fight poverty, not people."
The video also includes messages from low-income Americans and advocates calling for healthcare, living wages, "and more so everyone can thrive."
"I live in North Carolina. I work 60 hours a week and more and I still don't make enough money to live comfortably," Matthew Byars said in the video. "I'm chasing the American Dream, but I'm living the American nightmare. Raise the minimum wage. Impacted people matter too."
King, along with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, launched the original Poor People's Campaign in December 1967, months before he was assassinated in Memphis while supporting a strike by Black sanitation workers. King said the movement's demands were $30 billion for anti-poverty programs, full employment for all, a guaranteed universal income, and the annual construction of 500,000 affordable homes.
SCLC president Ralph Abernathy led the campaign after King's murder, and in May 1968—just weeks after King's murder—his widow, Coretta Scott King, led demonstrators in a two-week protest in Washington, D.C., where participants demanded an Economic Bill of Rights.
Camp life in Resurrection City 1968www.youtube.com
Thousands of poor people camped on the National Mall in a community called Resurrection City, which stood for six weeks—including on the day when Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-N.Y.) was assassinated on June 5—until police violently destroyed it and evicted the protesters.
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