April 15, 2021
WHAT: Standing on the shoulders of generations of freedom movements to emerge from the South, the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival announces our online national Mass Poor People’s and Low-Wage Workers’ Assembly to take place in June 2021, and plans for a March on Washington in June 2022.
WHO: Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, with poor and low-income organizers and moral leaders from Mississippi, which is one of the poorest states in the nation with 1.3 million poor and low-income people. They will shine a light on the ongoing policy violence in the state.
WHEN: 2 p.m. CT/3 p.m. ET on Monday, April 19
WHERE: Smith Park, 302 E. Amite St. Jackson, Mississippi, 39201. Also online at www.poorpeoplescampaign.org/livestream
WHY: The attempts to further voter suppression in Mississippi reflect a coordinated, nationwide effort to stifle the power of a multi-racial fusion movement to make democracy real for the 140 million poor and low-income living in the U.S. Our democracy suffers when people are removed from voter rolls, when early voting and same registration are restricted and when people’s voting rights are stripped away. We must continue to cry aloud as Mississippi residents endure the intersecting pandemics of poverty, racism, voter suppression and COVID-19 while thousands were left without water and electricity for almost four weeks due to a crumbling infrastructure that’s the result of decades of neglect by state and federal leaders.
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. Our demands are reflected in our Jubilee Platform.
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
Melissa Garriga | [email protected] | 228-990-4168