The 21st century Poor People’s Campaign, led by Bishop William J. Barber II, brings together “low-wealth” leaders in more than 30 states to carry out efforts to raise the voices and increase the power of the tens of millions of Americans who are at most a paycheck away from household financial disaster. The group registers voters and fights against voter suppression.
Bishop Barber is also the founding president of Yale Divinity School’s Center for Public Theology and Public Policy. That center held its second biennial conference in New Haven from April 12-14, under the title: “What are the Moral and Spiritual Issues of the 2026 Elections?”
Pam Garrison, the West Virginia tri-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, was one of the conference panelists. After her talk, Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with her about the campaign’s work and mission. Here Garrison reflects on battles against the coal industry and construction of fossil fuel pipelines across her state — and how poor people are faring today where many of the gains of recent years have been lost to powerful corporate interests under the Trump administration.
PAM GARRISON: The issues are the same issues that I was fighting seven years ago. And we made a little progress and then everything was just jerked away with the progress that we did made. Like with (Sen. Joe) Manchin with the Mountain Valley Pipeline, we had got that plumb stopped. It was stopped. And with the (Biden’s) Build Back Better, because Manchin is a coal baron, we were compromised again. I am so tired of being compromised. How come the people are the only one who’s ever compromised? How come our needs are the only thing that’s compromised? When we’re seeing a monopoly on every industry that there is, pushing out any kind of small business entrepreneurs or anything, they preach at all, “the small business, small business,” but then they’re monopolizing everything and the way they’ve got it structured, everything is against you being able to have it, be an entrepreneur.
And with the minimum wage, with the living wage. Even the ones like with the Democrats, you try to ask them about that question or about our needs, the needs of the people and they give you a flippant answer.
MELINDA TUHUS: What is the minimum wage in West Virginia?
PAM GARRISON: I would like to see, to be able to give people the knowledge, the heart, the hope, to reason, to use critical thinking, to remember where you came from. And does it match up to all this rhetoric and propaganda and lies you’re being told?
How to be able to process all of the bombardment. We’re in trauma. We went from 9/11 to the COVID. We’ve had so many … The country is suffering from post-traumatic stress. We’re traumatized by what has happened, what we’re seeing and we’re afraid of what we still got to face and where we’re going to end up. They have the resources. They have the money. They can buy the big ads and everything like that. They can do the brainwashing, you know, the same little thing over and over and over, trying to make a lie into truth. But when you’ve got the results of that policy and you’ve got those graves and you’ve got those stories and you’ve got those families, I don’t care how much propaganda they got, they cannot fight that.
They cannot stand up to that.
For more information on the Poor People’s Campaign, visit poorpeoplescampaign.org.
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