February 11, 2021
WHAT: The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival takes the fight for $15/hour to the streets with a socially distanced, in-person Moral Monday march in front of the West Virginia office of Sen. Joe Manchin. We also will hold an online rally with supporters from across the nation as we demand that any COVID relief include $15/hour.
WHO: Minimum-wage workers in West Virginia and Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, will march and speak out about the dire need of 62 million people, including 40% of Black workers, who make less than a living wage. While $15/hour is not a living wage everywhere, it will lift millions of people out of poverty and give them hope for a future that includes a roof over their heads, food on the table and other necessities of life. Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, will join the program online as will workers from Montana and Arizona.
WHEN: 3 p.m. ET / noon PT Monday, Feb. 15.
WHERE: Sen. Joe Manchin’s office at 900 Pennsylvania Ave., Charleston, West Virginia, and also online at https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org/livestream/.
WHY: The demand for $15/hour is as big a fight as the one for the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act in the 1960s. A relief bill must include relief that helps the people who need it the most — the 140 million poor and low-income people who live in this country, a number that has only increased in a pandemic. In West Virginia, 710,000 people are poor or low-income and across the South, not including West Virginia, that number is almost 50 million. The mandate for $15/hour lies with the 55% of poor and low-income people who voted for this president and vice president, not in the halls of Congress. Poor and low-income people were the first to return to work, the first to be infected and the first to die, and they must not be last in line for relief. This administration and Congress must respect us, protect us and pay us. Poor and low-income people, who showed their power at the ballot box in the last election, can change political will because a moral, constitutional agenda is a sound economic agenda as well as we lay out in our 14 Policy Priorities to Heal the Nation: A Moral and Economic Agenda for the first 100 days.
**The event will be ASL interpreted and open 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. 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