By the Rev. Dr. Monica Cross (a revolutionary)
At noon local time Saturday, March 2 in at least 30 state capitals,the Poor People’s Campaign, A National Call for a Moral Revival will hold Mass Poor People’s and Low Wage Workers State House Assemblies and to-the-Polls rallies. The goal is to bring the demands of 140 million poor and working-class Americans to the attention of state legislators and have them advocate for public policies that challenge poverty.
The Rev. William J. Barber II, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign has said that American poverty “spans every race, creed, color and sexual orientation.” He points out that the 140 million Americans in poverty make up 43.5 percent of the population – almost half the nation. “Any nation that ignores half of its people … is in a moral and economic crisis that is constitutionally inconsistent, economically insane and morally indefensible.”
And, as James Baldwin wrote in 1961 in Nobody Knows My Name: “Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor; and if one is a member of a captive population, economically speaking, one’s feet have simply been placed on the treadmill forever.”
Baldwin’s words still resonate. The poor pay more for banking through higher interest rates, overdraft fees, check cashing outlets and payday loans, unaffordable rents, transportation, education, healthcare, and public safety.
The Poor People’s Campaign A National Call for a Moral Revival is part of a progressive movement that shares the struggles of people impacted by the ruling class’s unjust policies around poverty. The Poor People’s Campaign pursues a strategy with legislators in state capitals to ensure that:
- Legislators and their staffs see and hear what goes on in the lives of their constituents
The campaign advocates for legislation such as the Third Reconstruction which addresses the needs and concerns of their constituents- The campaign humanizes their constituents
- The campaign shifts the moral narrative
- It advocates for policies and elections at every level of government and builds lasting power for poor and impacted people.
Poverty could be eradicated were it not for the public policy choices made by the ruling class, their politicians, their military, their corporations, and other interests which benefit from their policies.
This is what the Poor People’s Campaign means by a moral crisis in which the richest nation on Earth cuts budgets for social services while spending billions on endless wars. The campaign is an urgent call for a revolution of values in a time of late-stage capitalism, its politics, the rise of fascism and the emergence of artificial intelligence undergirded by an economic and social system that makes poverty unbearably expensive.
If we look at the American church, we see that it is an important part of a discussion on the strategies the ruling class uses against those in poverty. Many of the loudest voices in American Christianity today – right-wing evangelicals aligned with Christian fascism – spew Biblical interpretations that are antithetical to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and its values that uplift those in need who have their backs against the wall.
Mindful of Jonathon Wilson-Hartgrove’s 2018 book, Reconstructing the Gospel: Finding Freedom from Slaveholder Religion [1], about the perpetuation of racial injustice and white supremacy and the institution of slavery in the name of Jesus. He writes: “In America, racial politics has always been ‘Christian’ – has always cloaked itself in the language of redemption and morality. Co-opting the poor refugee Christ to defend white supremacy, we have crucified him on a gilded cross, turning our most revolutionary symbol of our movement into a talisman to finger when we’re anxious. … In all of this, we miss the basic message of the gospel and the wisdom of untold millions who’ve shown us a better way.” (Author’s emphasis).
The right-wing evangelicals’ rhetoric is authoritarian, mean-spirited, divisive and appalling. It is contextualized in the apocalyptic. It is the contaminated soil from which they push forward legislation that makes life for many who are poor in America precarious and deadly. Such evangelicals twist scriptures like the New Testament Gospel of John 12:8, where Jesus said: “You will always have the poor with you, but you won’t always have me.” (Contemporary English Version © 1995 by American Bible Society.) This is how such evangelicals defend a fiscal policy that serves the desire of the ruling class while devastating the lives of the poor, low income and working class. Such evangelicals, along with their policies and biblical vandalism are what the Poor People’s Campaign has been called to stand against.
The right-wing rhetoric contributes to the devaluing of work and human worth by design, and putting democracy at risk. It requires a movement, exemplified by the Poor People’ Campaign, based on the objective needs of those who struggle in their sorrows, meditations and intimate solidarity. Impacted people are the ground of a collective vision of a revolution in ideas, values, dignity, access, recognition and sustainability. The underlying interests of the movement are the liberation of imagination, attention and desire from extreme and at times violent individualism and private property rights which create the conditions for poverty and deny the ever-present cry for justice.
The Poor People’s Campaign is a radically inclusive prophetic space for the development of a social, religious, political and cultural consciousness with implications to public policy. Within this space, the revolutionary practices a liberated sense of attention which becomes an uncommon and invaluable form of radical generosity that undergirds a solidarity necessary for the development of fusion coalition. Rev. Barber defines fusion coalition as a people united around common values. “The appeal is not about right or left,” said Rev. Barber in an interview, “but rather about right or wrong. We must come together on the firm ground of truth and lift this nation to higher ground.”
In the face of fascism, the revolutionary has a moral imperative to stand against the attacks on the poor, low income, and working class and end the system of private property.
Poor People’s Campaign: www.poorpeoplescampaign.org
Published on February 1, 2024
This article originated in Rally!
P.O. Box 477113 Chicago, IL 60647 rally@lrna.org
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