Sentenced to poverty by low wages, workers ask Biden to meet

Contact: Martha Waggoner | mwaggoner@breachrepairers.org 

Labor unions, low-wage workers, faith leaders join Poor People’s Campaign for June 18th Mass Poor People’s and Low-Wage Workers’ Assembly and Moral March on Washington and to the Polls; call for meeting with President Biden 

Low-wage workers, union and faith leaders joined the Poor People’s Campaign on Monday to ask President Biden to meet with poor people and to call on the nation to join the campaign for its assembly and march on June 18th. 

As the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival mobilizes for that massive gathering, speakers at a news conference in DC again called on President Biden to meet with poor and low-wealth people, religious leaders and economists, to put a face on the 140 million Americans in this country who are poor or low-income while also calling for higher wages and union rights.

David Williams, who works at a Dollar General store in Louisiana, said workers “do so much with so little. All the effort you put in, you still feel like you're coming up short. Nothing is more powerful than an organized collective fight for respect. Respect is everything. When we’re respected, we get the dignity, we get the money and we can serve customers better.” 

The voices of poor people and low-wage workers like David Williams will be lifted up at the Poor People’s and Low-Wage Workers’ Assembly and Moral March on Washington and to the Polls on June 18th. And they are the same ones who deserve to meet with President Biden, said Bishop William J. Barber, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. 

Bishop Barber condemned the reality that “corporations are treated like people and people are treated like things.” He asked “why don’t poor people get meetings in the Oval Office instead of corporations?”  

Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, co-chair of the PPC:NCMR,  said Congress’ refusal to extend the child tax credit meant that half of the millions of people who had received that credit are now struggling just to feed their children. Communities facing unfathomable violence, such as Buffalo and Uvalde, were already struggling before the horror of violent white supremacy and mass killing put those towns on our front pages, she said.

 “War and militarism remain enemies of the poor,” she said, “both here in the United States and across the world.”

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

Morgan Leavy, a barista representing Starbucks Workers United, spoke on behalf of Starbucks workers who have recently won union recognition – including her new union, the first Starbucks to win in Texas.  

With all of Starbucks’ billions, she said, “Starbucks workers should not be poor people.”  

Beth Schaffer of South Carolina, from Rise Up Fight for $15 and a Union, described the exhaustion of working two jobs, totaling 62 hours a week and still struggling to pay her rent and take care of her elderly father because her wages are so low.  The minimum wage is only $7.25, she reminded people “sentencing us to poverty.  A lot of people work full time, and still end up homeless in this country.” 

Mary Kay Henry, president of the 2 million-strong Service Employees International Union, called this “a moment of great reckoning,” and thus “a time to get rid of politicians who prioritize campaign donations over justice.”  

Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, recalled his union’s longstanding ties with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s original Poor People’s Campaign.

“Poor people are still getting a raw deal,” he said. He went on to say that 1.4 million AFSCME members stand with the Poor People’s Campaign in this crusade, adding, “We will stand until we win.”

Rev. Melanie Mullen, representing Episcopal Bishop Michael Curry as director of Reconciliation, Justice, and Creation Care in the office of Presiding Bishop Episcopal Church, urged faith communities to join by reminding them “when those who march for labor, those who march for environmental justice and advocacy march - we must march with them.”  She went on to say that “if it’s not about love, it’s not about God.”

Rabbi Jonah Pesner, senior vice president of the Union of Reform Judaism and director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, called on President Biden to meet with and hear, “the voices of the Davids, and the Beths, and the Megans, and the workers and those without work, and those with homes and those without homes, those who are sick, those who are impoverished, but all those who are crushed by the broken healthcare system and the broken unfair economy.”

Keturah Johnson, international vice president of the Association of Flight Attendants-Communications Workers of America, spoke about their fight and victory against unacceptable low wages and dangerous working conditions amid rising travel costs. 

“Management wants to keep lining their pockets. They want to stay rich and keep us poor. After four years of stalled negotiations – while we kept our industry flying through the pandemic – we said, ‘enough is enough.’”

She explained how flight attendants at one airline voted 100-percent in favor of a strike. “We spoke with one voice and refused to be quiet about it. And you know what? We had a contract just a few months later and it made a difference in our lives, but there was more work to be done,” she said. 

Bishop Barber repeated his call for the president to meet with people hurt by poverty and the interlocking injustices of systemic poverty, systemic racism, ecological devastation, militarism and the war economy, and the false narrative of religious nationalism. The PPC:NCMR also sent a letter to President Biden. 

Speaking directly to President Biden, Barber urged him to recognize that “these are the faces and the voices most able to make your case when you say you want to pass a living wage, when you say you expand health care, These are the people who are hurt the most if we don't get a handle on inflation. And these are the people that can help change the political discussions in this country from one of mere partisanship to one of principle, high principle and moral declaration, which is our only hope in this nation.”