June 7, 2021

The 2021 Poor People’s Campaign gathering kicks off a 365-day campaign leading to a massive march & assembly in DC in 2022

WHAT: The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival leads a Poor People’s and Low-Wage Workers’ Assembly that’s both in person in Raleigh, North Carolina, and online from across the country. This assembly, part of a movement that’s diverse in every way, is the start of a 365-day campaign leading to a massive march on Washington in June 2022. Our demands include: updating the country’s antiquated poverty measure; the expansion of voting rights and the Voting Rights Act; a living wage and the guaranteed right of workers to form and join unions; healthcare for all; infrastructure improvements that build from the bottom up; a guarantee of safe and quality housing; reparations for Indigenous people; a guaranteed adequate income; making public welfare programs available to all immigrants and guaranteed high-quality pre-K-12 education for all, along with free higher education. 

WHO: Joining a call to action by the Poor People’s Campaign national co-chairs, Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, will be: poor, low-wealth and other impacted people and religious, moral and labor leaders along with economists, musicians, cultural artists, Hollywood actors/activists, lawyers and public health experts. The hybrid online/in-person mass assembly also will include activists from Poor People’s Campaign coordinating committees in 45 states, 300 organizing partners and over 1,500 clergy members of the PPC Prophetic Council. 

WHEN: 5:30 p.m. ET/2:30p.m. Pacific on Monday, June 21 

WHERE: In person: Halifax Mall, 300 N. Salisbury St., Raleigh, North Carolina. Online:  www.3rdReconstruction.org

WHY: On June 21, the Poor People’s Campaign will launch a campaign to fight forward for 365 days toward a massive, generationally transformative Moral March on Washington and Poor People’s & Low-Wage Workers’ Assembly on June 18, 2022. This historic gathering will provide a national stage for the voices and leadership of poor and low-wealth people and low-wage workers, embracing the agenda of the Third Reconstruction to end poverty.  

The Third Reconstruction is a revival of our constitutional commitment to establish justice, provide for the general welfare, end decades of austerity, and recognize that policies that center the 140 million are also good economic policies that can heal and transform the nation. 

**The June 2021 event will be Spanish-language interpreted, ASL interpreted & captioned.**

BACKGROUND: Nationally, more than 140 million poor and low-income people live in the United States, or 43% of the country’s population, and that was before the COVID-19 pandemic, and 250,000 die each year from poverty. Among those 140 million people are: 52.2% or 39 million children (below 18);  41.9% or 21 million elders (above 65); 42.6% or 65.8 million men; 45% or 74.2 million women; 60.4% or 26 million Black people; 64.1% or 38 million Latinx people; 40.8% or 8 million Asian people; 58.9% or 2.14 million Native/Indigenous people;  33.5% or 66 million white people. The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, with organizing committees in 45 states, is building a moral fusion movement to address the five interlocking injustices of systemic racism, systemic poverty, ecological devastation, the war economy and militarism and a distorted moral narrative of religious nationalism. 

For additional information: poorpeoplescampaign.org  https://youtu.be/PmOjcUoDhEs

Twitter: @unitethepoor / Instagram: @poorpeoplescampaign / Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ANewPPC

CONTACT: Martha Waggoner | [email protected]  | 919-295-0802