By Rev. Dorothy S. Boulware,
Word in Black
Imagine working 64 hours a week and being unable to cover basic needs like food, shelter and utilities. Imagine working that many hours at more than one job and still not having adequate health coverage for yourself or your family.
Millions of people in the United States live like this. In 2022, 17.1 percent of Black folks lived in poverty, twice the rate of White people, according to U.S. Census Bureau data — and elected officials often ignore their voices. But the Poor People’s Campaign has a master plan — a 40-week blitz to mobilize the political might of 15 million low-income voters in 30 states in time for the Nov. 5 presidential election.
“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,’” said campaign co-founder, activist and pastor Bishop William Barber II, while announcing the effort on Feb. 4 at the Press Club in Washington, D.C.
“Meanwhile, poor and low-income, low-wage 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,” he said.
Barber made the announcement with his fellow campaign leaders and several folks who will be putting boots on the ground — self-characterized poor people.
Together, they’re kicking off the campaign with a bold statement on March 2, orchestrating major actions at 30 statehouses across the United States. And they’re inviting hundreds of thousands of “poor” people, people of faith and activists to show up at their respective statehouses to raise hell and demand to be seen.
And they’re not stopping there. On June 15, these same people– and probably many more– plan to show up at the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., to sound the same alarm at Congress’s door. The message? Working folks in the United States shouldn’t be living worse than folks in countries we call “underdeveloped.”
And they have the goods: votes. This campaign could deliver millions of votes from poor people and low-wage workers who haven’t previously voted, although they’re eligible to do so.
According to the Pew Research Center, in the 2020 election, about 158.4 million people headed to the polls, but that was only 62.8 percent of people of voting age. Get those 87 million eligible voters to cast a ballot, and that’s an election game changer.
“It is time for a resurrection and not an insurrection,” Barber said.
During the event, Shailly Gupta Brown, national policy director for the campaign, said there are 39,000 eligible non-voters in Georgia alone, nearly four times greater than the 10,000-vote margin of victory in the last election.
This is another move in what Barber has coined the “Third Reconstruction: Fully Addressing Poverty and Low Wages From the Bottom Up.”
“Poverty is claiming 800 lives a day in this country. It’s time to build a 3rd Reconstruction and abolish poverty as the 4th leading cause of death,” according to the Poor People’s Campaign website.
Barber and his team met with Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington) and Barbara Lee (D-Cali.) to secure a resolution of the same name and intention: to ensure a livable wage, expanded Medicaid, fully funded public education, and an expanded childcare tax.
Indeed, the campaign’s website details that they’re seeking “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.”
Barber’s faith team, determined to restore that hope, includes leaders of all faiths, ordained and lay leaders committed to organizing and mobilizing.
It also includes workers with stories of homelessness, sickness, trying, and rarely succeeding because the system works against them. Beth Shafer said, “I’m exhausted,” and she should be– working 64 hours every week.
Liz Theoharis, director of the campaign partner, the Kairos Center — a national anti-poverty organization housed at Union Theological Seminary — spoke against a political system that could end poverty tomorrow if it chose to. Instead, decisions to end pandemic relief policies will ensure 700,000 people will have lost Medicaid by March.
“But we’re mobilizing, organizing, educating and motivating. More than a thousand voter suppression bills have been passed since the last election, and poverty is on the rise since the pandemic policies have lifted,” Theoharis said.
Poverty is the fourth leading cause of death in this country, according to Rev. A. Kazimir Brown, executive director of Repairers of the Breach, who added the fact that “46 million people still don’t have safe drinking water.”
Barber said, “We won’t be silent anymore. If we have to make Election Day a labor strike day, we will.”
This article was originally published by Word in Black.
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