From NC to WI, people share suffering; unite for change
Contact: Martha Waggoner | mwaggoner@breachrepairers.org
‘A system not dependent on the suffering of others’
Poor People’s Campaign holds Moral Monday in North Carolina, Wisconsin as it gets closer to Mass Poor People’s and Low-Wage Workers’ Assembly and Moral March on Washington and to the Polls on June 18th
Union rights, voting rights and environmental justice were just some of the issues that led a two-state Moral Monday in North Carolina and Wisconsin as the Poor People’s Campaign continued moving toward a historic gathering of poor and low-income people and their allies on June 18th in Washington, D.C.
But it was Oscar Sanchez of Chicago, who participated in a 30-day hunger strike in the campaign to stop General Iron in Chicago, who summed up the Moral Mondays held by the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival:
“We are deserving of a system that is not dependent on the suffering of others,” he said in Madison, Wisconsin. “We are deserving of a system that addresses our needs, a system that allows our children and future to exist without a 30-year life gap difference because that’s what we see in Chicago between the North Side and South Side.”
Impacted people and faith leaders from Virginia and South Carolina joined the Raleigh stop while the Wisconsin stop included those from Illinois, Iowa and Minnesota. The programs can be viewed here.
The co-chairs of the PPC:NCMR have deep connections to these two states, and each joined the rally in their state. Bishop William J. Barber II, who was born in Indianapolis in 1963, moved to his father’s hometown of Roper, North Carolina, in 1968. He is pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Goldsboro, North Carolina, and president of Repairers of the Breach.
Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis was raised in Milwaukee in a family dedicated to social justice. Her mother was a faith-based peace and justice activist. Her father—who passed away this past summer—broke open the FBI during the era of Director J. Edgar Hoover. He served as a professor and was active on voting rights and defending our democracy.
Rev. Barber is the architect of the Moral Monday movement, which began in 2013 when he was president of the state conference of the NAACP. About 1,000 people were arrested that year in protests at the General Assembly in reaction to the extremist takeover of state government.
“I said a few years ago when I was standing before some 60 million people (at the Democratic National Convention) that America needed a defibrillator and we needed to shock the heart of America, and we needed to revive the heart of America,” Rev. Barber said. “But after COVID, and after looking at the ways in which after COVID and after nearly a million deaths - we still can't give people healthcare and we still can't give people a living wage. I’m talking about what they (the government) can’t do. Now listen, when we still can't give people (their) human rights? What the declaration of human rights in 1948 says ought to be fundamental. We don't need to shock the heart. We need a heart transplant.”
In the right-to-work state of North Carolina, several speakers addressed union rights, including Alyssa Watkins, who is helping to organize a Starbucks in Raleigh.
“It is absolutely unacceptable for a company that made just under $5 billion this past year to have the people who are responsible for that profit living paycheck to paycheck,” she said.
Back in Madison, Rev. Theoharis ticked off the reasons why poor and low-income and their allies must speak up.
“When 250,000 people die in the richest country in human history—and this is before the million who have died because of a COVID-19 pandemic—we can’t be silent anymore,” she said. “When nearly half of the country and more than half of our kids live in poverty, we can't be silent anymore. When there are 14 million families who can't afford water or when 55 million folks are going to lose their right to vote, that voted in the 2020 elections. When immigrant rights are under attack, native and Indigenous people are under attack. Young people and trans people are under attack. We can't be silent anymore. And so we're gathered here this evening to call for a radical redistribution of political and economic power to call for a revolution of moral values and to build the power to enact all our demands.”
Mark Denning, an enrolled member of the Oneida Tribe of Wisconsin, said one of his sons died by suicide. Just over a month later, his daughter also died by suicide.
“She was a working poor student, a university student refusing to talk about her brother's suicide,” he said. “Went for help, and was turned away” because she didn’t have insurance.
“The complicity of the economy and healthcare systems leave the poor and fragile unprotected. Racism is a public health care issue.”
The Moral Mondays were part of a Mobilization Tour on the way to the Mass Poor People’s & Low-Wage Workers’ Assembly and Moral March on Washington and to the Polls.
Poverty is not a personal choice but a policy choice and even before COVID, these policies were killing and hurting people, with 250,000 dying from poverty each year in the US. That’s why the nation must have a Third Reconstruction agenda that demands, among other things: updating the poverty measure to reflect the real cost of living; enact a living wage and guarantee the right of all workers to form and join unions and guarantee quality health care for all.
The actions will call attention to the needs of the 44% of people—4.5 million—in North Carolina who are poor and low-income people and the 35% percent—or 2 million—in Wisconsin, along with the 140 million people nationally who were poor or low-income before COVID.
But poor and low-income people also have power at the polls. In the 2020 presidential election, poor and low-income cast about 43% of all votes in the 2020 presidential election.
Rev. Dr. Alvin Jackson, executive director of the Mass Poor People’s and Low-Wage Workers’ Assembly and Moral March on Washington and to the Polls, said in Madison that the country must see why the June 18th program is necessary.
“We are coming for a meeting because our politics are trapped by the lies of scarcity. Scarcity is a lie. There is abundance,” he said. “The only scarcity there is, is the moral will to do what's right. We are coming because we know what it has always taken to bring the nation to higher ground: people coming together.”
The Mobilization Tour next stops in New York City on April 11, followed by Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Memphis.
Others said in prepared remarks:
Shannon Wait of South Carolina, who worked at a Google Data Center.
“In January of 2021, I was suspended from my job at a Google Data Center in South Carolina for discussing wages and organizing. I was told I was not allowed to be a member of a union.
“Well, our union (Alphabet Workers Union-CWA) filed unfair labor practices to send Google a message - that workers' rights are human rights. Google was forced to post a notice in the workplace that says workers have a right to form a union and discuss pay.
“This is not enough - the law should make it easier for workers to organize, and companies should face harsher penalties for union-busting and committing abuse against workers.”
Tim Platt of Durham, North Carolina, with Carolina Amazonians United In Solidarity and Empowerment:
“The majority of full-time workers at Amazon have side gigs, Uber and Lyft stickers on their cars, people sleeping overnight in the warehouse parking lot because they picked up an extra 4 a.m. shift to make ends meet. A handful told me they even live out of their cars, in parking lots at Amazon. Some you can see commuting to work on foot at one of the most profitable companies in the history of the world.”
Sekia Royall, state mental health worker in Goldsboro and president of North Carolina Public Service Workers Union UE Local 150 and coordinating committee member of a Southern Workers’ Assembly:
“I see why major corporations are moving their companies to North Carolina. They get the biggest tax breaks in the country and are allowed to exploit workers by paying some of the lowest wages in the country. … Public workers face additional hurdles with the ban on collective bargaining. This law was passed during segregation; it is unbelievable that this Jim Crow law is still allowed to exist in 2022.”
T.J. Thompson of Chesapeake, Virginia, who enlisted in the Navy and is now a member of of Veterans for Peace:
“Organizing in the veterans' peace movement brought me to the Poor People's Campaign, where my traumas rooted in poverty, militarism and nationalism came into view.
“As I conclude, the war hawks swarm seeking further division. We must remain vigilant and avoid becoming their prey. In 2003, off the coast of Iraq, many of my fellow veterans and I participated in a role like Russia in Ukraine today. While we MUST stand in international solidarity with the masses of people in Ukraine, we must also recognize the importance of nonviolence and not ignore the plank in our own eyes. With victory our deadline, we must march together to DC on June 18, obliterating poverty, racism, nationalism, and ecological devastation locally, nationally, and globally.”
Sangria Noble, 44, student at N.C. A&T State University and a coordinator with NC Second Chance Alliance who was incarcerated:
“I was made to feel less than human because I could not even provide shelter for my three boys because there was no transitional housing for families with children over the age of 12.. I could not get ahead because I had barriers that kept us in poverty like attorney, probation, court fees, and the added interest of those fees.
“Once completing my probation I had to wait an additional two months in order to receive a white paper with black writing stating ‘Restoration of Rights’ I carry this paper with me everywhere. The pain and frustration of having my rights stripped have empowered me to fight for our rights.”
Oscar Pineda, 22, undocumented immigrant in North Carolina, orignally from El Salvador, who identifies as queer.
“Immigrants contribute greatly to the development of this country. Wwe contribute millions in taxes and Social Security. I have witnessed and experienced firsthand how hard people in my community work, and regardless of how many hours we work or jobs we have, our economic situation almost never allows us to rise from poverty. In fact our community is kept in the shadows, oppressed and disenfranchised, while simultaneously this nation hunts us down like dogs by sending ICE into our communities, and ripping children from their parents arms while our families are torn apart. That is immoral and inhumane!”
Bobby Jones with Down East Coal Ash Environmental and Social Justice Coalition in Goldsboro, North Carolina:
“The largely BIPOC and poor white communities that have been relegated to living in these compromised communities have had to endure poisonous and nauseous living environments, sickness and even death. They have longed for justice, removal of the coal ash, removal of the hog lagoons and a community where they could live and thrive.”
Joseph Peery, a formerly homeless person who lives in public housing in Chicago:
“Two blocks from me are 440 vacant units of housing. We were promised that people would move out temporarily, the apartments would be renovated, and then people would move back in. Promise broken.
Those units have been empty for over 10 years while the homeless die on the streets. That is blood on the hands of CHA. When we complained, HUD told us they're saving public housing by making it private. Now public housing is run by private Realtors. The results? Homelessness everywhere.”
Jason Rivera, a junior at UW-Madison and a member of RISE, a national student-led non-profit that organizes for free college and student food and housing security—and the Wisconsin Poor People’s Campaign:
“Today, I can say that no one could have prepared me for how difficult it would be. No, not the classes or long walk up Bascom, but just trying to survive. I was lucky to have my tuition fully paid for by the PEOPLE program here, but even with that I still faced food insecurity, housing insecurity, and even had to drop out of school for a semester because I couldn’t make ends meet. The leading response to students like me is, get a job. I have two and three during breaks. It's not that I and other students don’t want to work, we just don’t have 30 hours in a day. It's unfair and immoral to ask kids who just graduated high school to drop their education and work to survive. It’s immoral to ask us to sacrifice our youth to save up money to eat the next day.”
Marianne Oleson, EXPO, Appleton-Oshkosh-Neenah Area
“I'm an organizer with Expo (Ex-Incarcerated People Organizing). And I want to tell you about the first EXPO event that I attended. At that event I was the only woman who didn't end up homeless when she came out of prison. And there's only one reason - my husband had stood by me. If he hadn't, we'd all [at that convention] been homeless. There was no system in place to provide us even basic human rights. Come on. Who among us, isn't more than our worst choice, right?”