President Biden: Poor people still ask to meet with you
Contact: Martha Waggoner | mwaggoner@breachrepairers.org
Ahead of March on Washington, poor people & low-wage workers request meeting with President Biden
Poor People’s Campaign holds news conference Monday in DC to urge President Biden to meet with delegation from Mass Poor People’s and Low Wage Workers’ Assembly and Moral March on Washington and to the Polls on June 18
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In the midst of inflation and economic challenges, the Poor People’s Campaign is asking President Biden to meet with a diverse group of poor and low-income workers, religious leaders and economists to discuss meeting the post-COVID and inflationary challenges by centering Americans who have been most directly impacted.
“We’ve heard the president’s commitment to living wages, expanded health care and protections of voting rights,” said Bishop William J. Barber II, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. “And we know, it will take a moral fusion, diverse movement to get past the gridlock in DC and challenge regressions in states so we’re bringing the people whose lives are on the line to put a face and voice on the 140 million poor and low-wealth people in America We’re putting a face on these issues and raising the moral challenge back by the data that says only if we lift from the bottom can everybody rise. We are asking the president to use his bully pulpit to help lift these voices.”
The PPC:NCMR will hold a news conference Monday to call for a White House meeting with representatives of the 140 million poor and low-income people in the country and to announce a host of new partners that are joining and busloads of people that are coming after over a year of planning. Speakers include Bishop Barber and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, also a co-chair of the PPC:NCMR.
The news conference will begin at 10 a.m. ET Monday, June 6, at National City Christian Church at 5 Thomas Circle NW in Washington, D.C. Reporters can attend in person or watch the live stream here.
The PPC:NCMR also will release a letter to the president, asking for the meeting.
“Poverty is immoral and wrong in ere are solutions and policies at hand to the problems facing poor and low-income people.
Other speakers include impacted people and representatives of the approximately 300 mobilizing partners from every state and region of the country who are joining the PPC:NCMR for the Mass Poor People’s and Low-Wage Workers’ Assembly and Moral March on Washington and to the Polls on June 18th.
This will mark at least the third time that the PPC:NCMR, which has held numerous rallies for Biden’s Build Back Better plan, has requested a meeting with the president.
The PPC:NCMR wrote to President Biden in September to request that he meet with poor and low-income people. Two months later, poor and low-income people in West Virginia sent a letter to the president asking again to meet with him. .
Also, in September 2020, then-Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden told an online gathering of the PPC:NCMR that if he won the election, ending poverty would be more than an aspiration.
Instead, “it will be a theory of change to build a new economy that includes everyone where we award hard work, care for the most vulnerable among us and release the potential of all our children, protect the planet …” Biden said.
The PPC:NCMR delegation to the White House would be made up of Black, low-wage medical workers, white farmers, Latino meat plant workers, Indigenous fast food workers from Mississippi to Massachusetts to North Carolina to New York to Kansas to Kentucky to Texas to California to Illinois to Georgia.
As the Biden White House embarks on a month-long economic campaign, clearly the nation’s economic health is in trouble. By lifting from the bottom, the president can put a face on poverty and low wages and make America see not only 32% of the electorate but also herself.