Put June 18th on your calendar; poor people are coming to DC!

Contact: Martha Waggoner | mwaggoner@breachrepairers.org 

MEET US IN DC ON JUNE 18TH FOR THE MASS POOR PEOPLE’S AND LOW-WAGE WORKERS’ ASSEMBLY AND MORAL MARCH ON WASHINGTON AND TO THE POLLS

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The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival and its 40 state coordinating committees, supported by over 170 mobilizing partners, over 20 religious and denominational bodies and a growing Prophetic Council of over 2,500 clerics, will hold the Mass Poor People’s and Low-Wage Workers’ Assembly and Moral March on Washington and to the Polls. 

The assembly and march will be held from 10 a.m. ET to 3 p.m ET on Saturday, June 18, at 3rd Street and Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C.*  Impacted people, faith leaders, unions, environmental, civil rights and women’s groups  – all the people who make up the fusion movement that is the PPC:NCMR –  join our national co-chairs, Bishop William J. Barber II and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, to make the nation hear the voices and see the faces of the poor and low-income people who represent the 140  million who suffer under this nation’s policies.

 Because poverty is a policy choice, not a personal failure:

• 700 people die each day, or 250,000 a year, from poverty and inequality – before COVID 

• During the pandemic, people in poorer counties died at a rate of up to five times higher than people in wealthier counties. 

• The 140 million poor and low-income people include 43% or all adults; 52% of children; and 73% of women. 

• In 2022, 52 million people are working for less than $15 an hour, mainly in Southern states.

• Before the pandemic, 87 million adults were uninsured or underinsured in the US

• Before the pandemic, 53 cents of every federal discretionary dollar went to the military, and only 15 cents to anti-poverty programs. 

• Before the pandemic, 14 million households could not afford water. During the pandemic, moratoriums on water and utility shut offs were enacted in dozens of states. These moratoriums have ended, and  without federal protections, 218 million people—or 67% of the US population—are vulnerable to losing their access to water. 

• Millions of people are facing voter suppression, especially in poor and low-wealth communities 

• Reproductive rights are being denied for women, a burden that will fall mostly on poor and low-wealth women, 

And yet:  

• And yet, the poor and low-income electorate is a powerful political force: Over 150 million votes were cast in the general election in 2020, and 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.

So now: 

• It’s time for a coming-together 

• It’s time to reset the moral agenda

• It’s time to build political power

• And it’s time to push the Third Reconstruction agenda 

Because there are forces that want to:

• Lower wages 

• Block health care

• Lower taxes for corporations during economic hard times and inflation

Building on the power of our June 2020 online program, which garnered over 2 million views, we have been planning this assembly and march for over a year to make the nation hear these words: Somebody has been hurting us for far too long and we won’t be silent or unseen anymore. 

And we won’t stop with June 18th. We will lead a massive push to the polls to build political power and make sure not only that the voices of poor and low-wealth people are heard in political debates but also that this nation implements policies that lift from the bottom. 

*Schedule of programs (more to come): 

• 5 p.m. ET Friday, June 17th, Freedom Plaza, dinner for unhoused people and early arrivals for June 18th.

• 7:30 p.m. ET Friday, June 17th, Lincoln Memorial, a memorial for all who died unnecessarily in the past two years, including from COVID and poverty and from war, including Ukraine. 

• 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. ET, Saturday, June 18th, at 3rd Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, assembly and march.