March toward DC on June 18th continues with stop in LA

Contact: Martha Waggoner | mwaggoner@breachrepairers.org 

Poor, low-wealth people rally in Los Angeles as the Poor People’s Campaign marches toward a historic meeting in DC on June 18th

California’s economy is so robust that its GDP of $3.4 trillion means it would rank as the fifth-largest economy in the world. And yet, a father of four suffering from COVID-19 was sent home to die because the doctor said it would be too expensive to treat him, his widow said during a Poor People’s Campaign rally in Los Angeles. 

Lucia Torres, who came to the U.S. from Guatemala 21 years ago and is an activist with Union de Vecinos, said Monday that her husband lost his job when the pandemic hit. Then, in December 2021, her husband went to the hospital for COVID-19 treatment. 

“And because we didn’t have documents, the doctor said the cost of treatment would be too high, and he had to go home to die with us,” she said.  “We know that immigrants are LA, and we deserve respect and our rights.”

Lucia Torres spoke during the Mobilization Tour stop in Los Angeles, led by the California Poor People’s Campaign, which is one of about a dozen stops on the way to the Mass Poor People's & Low-Wage Workers' Assembly and Moral March on Washington and to the Polls.

The rally was held after a march that began at City Hall. The program can be viewed here. 

(Photo by Steve Pavey/Poor People’s Campaign/Repairers of the Breach/Kairos Center) 

Bishop William J. Barber II, a co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival asked what does a nation do when 140 million people are poor or low-wealth; when people die from poverty and when the poor die of COVID at rates up to five times higher than the wealthy; and when voting rights, living wages, immigrant justice and women’s rights are under attack. 

“What do we do with all of this, especially when the Constitution says we must establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity?” he asked. 

“We have to keep organizing and mobilizing. This is why we have discerned that we must have a Mass Poor People’s and Low-Wage Workers’ Assembly and Moral March on Washington and to the Polls in this moment – to put a face on these numbers, to call for a moral reset and so that the rejected of every race, along with people of faith and people of deep moral concern- – advocates we must have massive moral meeting to launch a season of deep commitment to help save the heart and soul of this nation and democracy.”

The state campaign invited the PPC:NCMR to join the action, led by the co-chairs: Bishop Barber and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis. People from Arizona, Oregon and Washington state also spoke. 

As she introduced the speakers, Rev. Dr. Theoharis reminded those in the crowd that 

“Right before Jesus was killed, he was protesting and marching into Jerusalem. … and folks got nervous that people were organizing and said, you've got to stop them. You can’t let them speak. And Jesus replied: if these were silent, the stones would cry out. 

I want to introduce to you some of those that are crying out.”

Those crying out included Dr. Wendsler Nosie Sr. of the Apache Stronghold, who said evil sits in the “corporate world that we live in that dismantles you as a person, and as a community, and as a family. Those are the things that we have to directly recognize and if we recognize that then we know the road that we should be on and it's going to require every one of us. … This is the time - you are born in this moment. We are here in this moment to fight the greatest evil.”

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. 

Curtis Freeman of the Sacramento PPC said he’s in temporary housing that's been federally funded by the government. It’s supposed to lead to permanent housing, but the government is ending the program and residents will have to pay $800 a month or be evicted. 

“And at the end of the day, they're saying that they run out of funds. They run out of funds for housing for us. So this coming July 1st, they're putting out,” he said. 

Monday’s action called attention to the needs of the 20 million – or 51% – of Californians who are poor or low-income and the 140 million people nationally who were poor or low-income before COVID. 

The action came as the nation hit 1 million COVID deaths and several weeks after the PPC:NCMR released the Poor People’s Pandemic Report, which showed deadly disparities between COVID deaths in wealthier counties vs. poorer ones. 

But poor people do have power. Over 150 million votes were cast in the general election in 2020. Poor and low-income people accounted for one-third of those votes and they make up one-third of the overall electorate, as our study shows. In battleground states, these voters accounted for even higher percentages of the vote. If organized across race, region, and issue around an agenda that centers the poor, they could shift the political maps of the country.

“I know for far too long, we have been told that if we pull our bootstraps, worked hard, that we too can have a piece of the American dream,” said Nourbese Flint, senior director of black leadership and engagement for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. “And I know that for far too long, that contract has been broken. As we stand here in Los Angeles with the largest homeless population in the country, where you can work 80 hours a week and still not have ends meet, there are too many of us that don't have boots to strap up. We have done everything they asked of us and still continue to be let down by some politicians that are playing political games with our very real lives.”

OTHER VOICES 

Maya Morales of the Washington state People's Privacy Network & People First Bellingham

Many in the U.S. are realizing the importance of data privacy now that “uterus-having people can be tracked and identified as having accessed abortion care via our cell phones, and the fact that increasingly, our fight for people’s data privacy and tech justice; and our fights for immigrant, racial, gender, housing, health and labor justice — these are swiftly becoming one and same!”

Bartholomey Perez of Fight for 15 Los Angeles

“It is amazing that we are in front of the building where laws are made, in the shadow of the place where the economy is ruled and we are surrounded by poverty. we the more than half a million fast food workers in California have face everything from wage staff, to violence, to sexual harassment, and dangerous conditions in the work environment. 

During the pandemic McDonald’s won billions in profits while workers were denied healthcare.”

Rev. Dr. Monica Cross of Richmond, California, a transgender woman, a pastor and a retired Navy veteran who lives next to a Chevron Oil Refinery. 

“For 22 years I defended the United States and its military policies,” she said. Now she says she sees and experiences “the impact of the war economy on housing, poverty and the environment. I now work to counter the impact of the military war economy and the unjust legislation that makes life unbearable for many Americans.”