Poor people join virtual rally ahead of Texas primary; next stop, Cleveland

Contact: Martha Waggoner | mwaggoner@breachrepairers.org 

Five  states, multiple organizations join virtual program ahead of Mass Poor People’s and Low-Wage Workers’ Assembly and Moral March on Washington and to the Polls on June 18th 

In-person actions begin March 14th in Cleveland 

As Texans prepared to vote Tuesday in the first primary of this election season, impacted people and faith leaders from that state focused on voter suppression and economic issues that are hurting poor and low-wealth people there and across the country when they spoke during a Poor People’s Campaign virtual program. 

Julio Acosta of Dallas, who moved from Mexico to the US when he was 2 years old, said the Texas Tribune reported that people of color made up 95% of the population growth in Texas from 2010 to 2020. 

“With redistricting, the majority in the state legislature, a majority they only have because Texas is one of the hardest places to vote in the nation, strategists orchestrated giving people of color of Texas less representation,” he said during the program Monday night. “As a Latino immigrant, this directly affects my community. Instead of expanding our democracy, they also continue to make it tougher to vote.”

The people of this country “need to come together to say with one mighty and powerful voice that our needs and pain will no longer be ignored,” Acosta said. “Our time to be seen and heard is now!”

Acosta was one of many voices lifted during the virtual Mobilization Tour stop that included people from Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Kansas on the way to the  The Mass Poor People's & Low-Wage Workers' Assembly and Moral March on Washington and to the Polls on June 18th.

Faith leaders and artists also joined the program, which can be viewed here. 

All these states suffer from high poverty, voter suppression, denial of healthcare and the lack of living minimum wage: 

PLI=poverty/low-income

But poor and low-income people in these states also voted in high percentages in the 2020 presidential election: Arkansas 47%; Louisiana 40%;  Oklahoma, 45%; Texas, 34% and Kansas, 38%

These numbers show that a fusion coalition of Black, white, Latino, Asian and Native poor people and their allies can shift the outcome of elections and public policy. 

Despite the potential of this fusion coalition, media reports said that President Biden doesn’t plan to mention his Build Back Better agenda, which was meant to be a hallmark of his administration to lift from the bottom, said Bishop William J. Barber II, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. 

“In the America where there’s poverty and hurt, the union is not well, but there is strength there” Bishop Barber said. “It is the strength of the moral voices in the country, poor and low-wealth people, who can shift the narrative. On June 18, we want you to join us for the largest gathering of poor and low-wealth people, religious leaders and their advocates in the history of the country,  not for a day but for a declaration.”

“We welcome the movement for the marginalized,” said Rev. Dr. Frederick Haynes, senior pastor of Friendship-West Baptist Church in Dallas and co-chair of the Samuel Proctor Conference. 

The Urban Institute ranked Dallas “dead last in economic inclusion. Dallas is the most economically segregated city in the country. I think that is called spit,” he said, referencing an incident when a man spit on Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “ Southern Methodist University came out with a report highlighting infrastructure deserts. I call them infrastructure apartheid because they have because they have 76 infrastructure injustices and the majority is on a particular side of town with Black, brown and poor people.”

Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, co-chair of the PPC:NCMR, said the country is going through what the Bible calls “a Kairos moment – a time of great crisis, the crumbling of institutions, the breaking down of society. Plagues and pandemics shedding light on foundations of injustice.

“But this moment is also about the possibility for change, the birth, the  growth of movements for justice. A time for the poor and low-wealth to make bold and visionary demands, and a people who come forward to repair the breaches, restore the streets to dwell in.”

Two speakers from Kansas talked about the threats to both farming and farmers.

Mark Pringle, a fourth-generation farmer, talked about the health care statistics that hurt everyone in the state, including farmers, such as the lack of Medicaid expansion that n has resulted in the death of two Kansans per day, and the loss of over $4 billion in much-needed funding.

He also covered the stories of the people behind those numbers, such as: 

• The farmer who lost the family farm trying to pay for his wife’s hospitalization and treatment for cancer.

• The widow who died at home from COVID, rather than risk a large hospital bill.

• And two farmers who completed suicide. One was heavily in debt from farming, while the other feared being a financial burden to his family after a severe accident.

And JohnElla Holmes, executive director and president of the Kansas Black Farmers Association in Nicodemus, Kansas, said three out of 10 Black farmers in Kansas qualify for monthly commodity food boxes.

“I am here to stress that our farmers and rural community members have historically and systematically suffered food injustices and inequities and are often left to seek federal assistance via food stamps. For example, a white-owned farm's median income is $17,190 vs. black-owned farms $2,408,” she said. 

“I come to inform you that this is not a new phenomenon; my ancestors and I have lived with these injustices for generations. The Kansas Black Farmers Association and Historic Site Nicodemus, Kansas, will be represented at the Poor People's march June 18th.”

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COMMENTS FROM OTHER SPEAKERS: 

Rev. Dr. Alvin O’Neal Jackson, executive director, Mass Poor People’s and Low-Wage Workers’ Assembly and Moral March on Washington and to the Polls: 

I'm fired up and ready to go for the Mass Poor People's and Low-Wage Workers’ Assembly and Moral March on Washington and to the Polls on June 18th – not a day but a declaration, not a moment but a movement we’re building, not an insurrection but a resurrection a reconstruction, a revolution of values. Our people are coming by bus, by train, by car, by plane. We even got word that some folk are planning to walk. All roads leading to Washington D.C,. because there were 140 million poor and low-income people before the pandemic and things have only gotten worse since the pandemic. Fifty-seven years after the Voting Rights Act of 1965, voting rights are under attack in nearly every state and you know it’s under attack in Texas and the surrounding states.”

Corinna Whiteaker-Lewis, director of religious education, San Gabriel Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Georgetown, Texas. 

When greed and fear motivate others to try to keep our power from us, we must  Mobilize, Organize, Register, and Educate our way out of this unjust system….an  immoral system, that does not value – as my faith calls me to – the inherent worth and dignity of every person.  

This is not a country by the people, for the people. It is a country for a few people,  and they will do all they can to keep every benefit to themselves. 

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Rabbi Alan Freedman of Temple Beth Shalom in Austin:

For those that live in Texas tomorrow is primary day and this provides us with an opportunity to cast our ballots for those that share our values and who are committed to a vision of America with true liberty and full justice for all. What makes this country great is not its present, but the promise of its future. For America to reach that promise, we must not simply accept our country as it is, but instead, we must remain faithful to a vision of America as it should be.

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Sache Primeaux-Shaw, Oklahoma PPC and enrolled member of the Ponca Nation of Oklahoma and a freedmen descendant of the Seminole and Chickasaw nations:

Oklahoma is in a state of on-going crisis. We currently incarcerate more people in the nation and more women in the world. There are many broken families as a result of this. I am the child of a formerly incarcerated Black and Indigenous woman. I am also the niece of a currently incarcerated person. 

Meanwhile, Julius Jones, a young Black man who was railroaded by the system, was almost executed for a crime that he says he didn’t commit. 

Meanwhile, our state government is still treating the COVID crisis casually. Late last year, the Oklahoma County commissioners unanimously voted to use state COVID relief funds to build a new county jail even though one in 400 Oklahomans have died from COVID, including my grandmother. 

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Josiah Matthews of Jonesboro, Arkansas, tri-chair of the Arkansas Poor People’s Campaign and the father of four children. 

Matthews said he was fired after filing a complaint about racism at his workplace:

There was no union to help resolve the situation I was facing, so I turned to the EEOC for help. I filed a complaint as well as an appeal, and they never helped to resolve the issue. I was fired. I had to forego payments on my credit card to take care of my family. My wife had to pick up more work. I had credit card debt that I couldn’t pay. My credit score dropped, and three years later I’m still paying off that debt and trying to get my credit score back up. My case happens a lot to a lot of people. We live in states with right-to-work laws, where workers aren’t allowed to unionize, and at-will means they can fire you without cause. 

That is why I joined the Arkansas Poor People’s Campaign because I was a victim of systemic racism, and despite the fact I went to college, I don’t have a record, I vote, I’m active in my community. I did everything right, and still the system failed me. We sometimes just think about people who are poor, but don’t think about these systems that are set up to put people in poverty.

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Sharon Lavigne, environmental justice activist in Louisiana focused on combating the expanding industrial complexes in Cancer Alley:

“Our parish president would not listen to us a few weeks ago when we went to his office to speak to him and he told us that he wanted Formosa to come in. Our parish council man in my district, we talked to him and asked him why did he vote yes for Formosa to come into the 5th District, where he also lives. 

He said God told him to vote yes for Formosa. We said God didn't tell you to poison his people. We don't know what kind of God he’s serving, but God is not going to tell you to poison his people. … We’ve tried to talk to President Biden to ask him to stop this because we as a people we want to live and we will come to Washington, D.C.,  on June 18th and we will march and we will call everyone to help us with this, help us to save our lives, help us to breathe clean air and drink clean water.