Rev. William Barber and Poor People’s Campaign plan to rally thousands in D.C. in June
On the eve of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, the national Poor People’s Campaign kicked off a season of activism the group hopes will draw hundreds of thousands of people to march in Washington in June to demand political reform.
“We’re not begging the government. We’re trying to save the nation,” said the Rev. William J. Barber II, who led anonline event Friday with Poor People’s Campaign co-founder, the Rev. Liz Theoharis.
During the 90-minute press conference, Barber, Theoharis and other activists quoted King and echoed the slain civil rights leader’s unrealized dreams of an equitable American society.
Thwarted by gathering restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic over nearly two years and recovering himself from a mild case of the virus, Barber seemed energized by the plan to hold the Mass Poor People’s and Low-Wage Workers’ Assembly and Moral March on Washington and To the Polls on June 18.
“We are committed to mobilizing the largest mass assembly of poor people and low-wage workers in this county’s history,” Barber said.
He noted, as he often does, that 140 million people in the U.S. — more than 43% of the country’s 2017 population — was living below 200 percent of the poverty level before the pandemic. During the pandemic, those people have suffered the most, being called essential but getting treated as expendable, Barber said.
Especially during the early months of the pandemic, people of color, who are more likely than whites to work in low-wage jobs with no health insurance and little or no paid sick time, were more likely to contract COVID-19 and were more likely to die from it. Meanwhile, large corporations have seen their profits soar during the pandemic, Barber noted.
“We re in a crisis of civilization. We are in a crisis of democracy. We are in a crisis of morality that we must seek redemption from,” Barber said.
Barber, who pastors Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, is a social justice advocate who received a 2018 MacArthur Foundation grant.
It wasn’t mentioned during Friday’s event, but Barber will be honored this year by the King Center of Atlanta as a Beloved Community Civic Leadership honoree. This year’s award ceremony will be held online and will stream on social media on Saturday beginning at 7:30 p.m. The Beloved Community Award honors individuals and organizations for leadership in social justice work.
Several other faith leaders spoke at Friday’s kickoff, along with organizers from several state committees of the Poor People’s Campaign. The state workers will “organize and mobilize” to get people to attend the June 18 event and to register people to vote.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts tuned into the kickoff event and promised to attend the June 18 march. “America is once again at a crossroads,” she said, as it was in King’s time, with stagnated wages for the poor, a lack of affordable housing and restricted access to health care.
Warren said Congress needs to pass the embattled Build Back Better Act, touted by the White House as a framework for the U.S. “to meet its climate goals, create millions of good-paying jobs, enable more Americans to join and remain in the labor force, and grow our economy from the bottom up and the middle out.”
Critics have said the federal spending prescribed by bill has the potential to cause inflation.
The Poor People’s Campaign also is pushing Congress to pass the Freedom to Vote Act, the Protecting Our Democracy Act and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, three pieces of federal legislation aimed at preserving voting rights, preventing abuses of presidential power and international interference with elections, and other reforms.
This story was originally published January 15, 2022 at 8:00 AM with the headline "Rev. William Barber and Poor People’s Campaign plan to rally thousands in D.C. in June."
