Last week, hundreds of thousands joined us online for the Poor People’s Campaign National Poor People’s & Low-Wage Workers’ Assembly live from the Halifax Mall in Raleigh, NC.
The assembly was the start of 365 days of action leading to a Mass Poor People’s and Low-Wage Workers’ Assembly and National Moral March on Washington next year on June 18, 2022.
We who have heard the cries of poor people, low-wage workers, and other impacted neighbors have work to do.
Until the poor are lifted; workers are paid; the sick are healed and insured; voting is not suppressed; police killing is stopped; land, air, and water are not poisoned; war is not pushed, promoted, and promulgated; humanity is respected; children are protected; and civil rights and labor rights and human rights are never neglected — until these things are actualized, their absence must embolden and intensify our dissent and agitation.
President Biden recorded prepared remarks for the National Assembly reaffirming his commitment to working with the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival:
“I don’t think we’ve ever been together at a time of such great opportunity to deliver dignity to our poor and low-wage workers and make ending poverty not just an aspiration, but a theory of change.”
Two days later, more than 300 people gathered in front of the U.S. Supreme Court for a Moral March on Manchin and McConnell. Hundreds participated in the COVID-safe march, in addition to the tens of thousands of online viewers.
We inaugurated a season of direct action to say that there are some things that are non-negotiable. We don’t need an insurrection, we need a nonviolent, moral mobilization and direct action.
We need to fight until hell freezes over, and then we need to fight on the ice. We don’t need compromise and capitulation. We need to send a message to our Congresspeople, loud and clear: Break the filibuster! Pass the bills! Pass voting rights, pass living wages, pass healthcare. Do what’s right for the American people, and do it for poor and low-wealth people, and do it now.
Brave people from West Virginia and Kentucky, as well as faith leaders including me, Rev. Jennifer Butler and Rev. Jesse Jackson, were among those who were arrested as we marched from the Supreme Court to the Hart Senate building in an attempt to meet with Sens. Manchin and McConnell.
We engaged in nonviolent moral, civil disobedience and were arrested to dramatize that the Senators are wrong and that they will not meet with their constituents.
West Virginians say they’re tired of Manchin supporting the filibuster and not supporting them, talking about bipartisanship rather than talking about the needs of West Virginia.
Pam Garrison from the West Virginia Poor People’s Campaign arrested (photo by Yolanda Barksdale / Repairers of the Breach)
This is just the beginning. People all over the country are recognizing that we need a season of nonviolent civil disobedience and direct action, because that’s how voting rights were won and that’s the only way we’re going to keep them and expand them.
This is a moment when We the People must draw a line in the sand. The right of every citizen over 18 years of age to participate in America’s democracy is non-negotiable.
Stay tuned: The Poor People’s Campaign is calling for marches across the U.S. in coming weeks. If we’ve got to sit in senators’ offices, if we need to sit in the streets, we’re going to deploy every nonviolent means available to fight for voting rights, living wages, healthcare, infrastructure, and a Third Reconstruction.
Forward together, not one step back.
Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II
President and Senior Lecturer, Repairers of the Breach
(photos above by Steve Pavey / #HopeInFocus)