The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival has picked up where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Poor People’s Campaign ended in 1968. The national movement holds up the three evils that King decried: racism, poverty and war, and adds a fourth, ecological devastation.
In 2018, the campaign held six weeks of nonviolent civil disobedience actions across 30 states, and this year, from June 17 to 19, hundreds of poor people and their supporters came together as delegates for the Moral Action Congress at Trinity University in Washington, D.C.
Presidential candidates from both major parties were invited to be interviewed, and nine Democratic candidates attended, including most of the frontrunners at the time, former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vermont, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts and Sen. Kamala Harris, D-California. The second day featured a keynote address by the Rev. William Barber, co-chairman of the Poor People’s Campaign, and a wide variety of workshops on topics such as voting rights, a moral budget, moral fusion organizing and base-building. The third day featured a people’s hearing on poverty in America. Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus attended the congress, and recorded a talk delivered by the Rev. Barber about the goals of the movement on the first day of the conference, which is excerpted here.
Visit the Poor People’s Campaign website at poorpeoplescampaign.org
