2018-04-20

10
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WASHINGTON, D.C. — Fifty years
after Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference organized
thousands of Americans in an anti-poverty
effort popularly known as the Poor People’s
Campaign, a group of progressives want to
revive the effort on the heels of a sweeping
new report surveying poverty in the United
States.
Gathered in the nation’s capital on
Tuesday, organizers and activists announced
a 40-day multi-state action protesting
economic disparities across the country
and their underlying causes. Emphasizing
the “moral fusion” and intersecting nature
of oppressions, speakers pointed to The
Souls of Poor Folk, a study taking stock of
the breadth and depth of poverty across the
United States, published the same day.
Authored by the Institute for Policy
Studies (IPS), The Souls of Poor Folk reviews
the 50 years between the initial launch
of the Poor People’s Campaign in 1968 and
modern day. Its findings emphasize the
impact systemic racism, climate change,
outsized military funding, immigration
crackdowns, and other factors have played
in exacerbating poverty.
“There’s an enduring narrative that if the
millions of people in poverty in the [United
States] just worked harder, they would be
lifted up out of their condition,” IPS Director
John Cavanagh said before a packed room
Tuesday morning. “But here we’re proving
— with data and analysis spanning 50 years
— that the problem is both structural barriers
for the poor in hiring, housing, policing,
and more.”
He added, “It is unfathomable that in
the wealthiest nation in the world, medical
debt is the number one cause of personal
bankruptcy filings and 1.5 million people
don’t have access to plumbing.”
Activists have long rallied around these
issues when discussing poverty and the
need for policy change, but those gathered
in Washington said the new research is essential
to corroborating their argument.
“The goal is to not have only the faces,
but the facts and the footnotes,” said Rev.
William Barber II, founder of Repairers of
the Breach, a non-partisan movement and
one of hundreds of organizations behind the
new Poor People’s Campaign, an “audit” of
the state of poverty in the United States.
Facts and footnotes abound in the 123-
page report, which centers on a number of
key areas, including white supremacy and
the impact of hardline immigration polices.
Black, Latinx, and Native American communities
disproportionately live in poverty,
an issue exacerbated by “tough on crime”
practices and discrepancies within the
criminal justice system. Federal spending
on anti-immigration measures like border
strengthening and deportations, meanwhile,
increased from $2 billion to $17 billion
between 1976 and 2015 — a jump that has
left many immigrant families struggling to
meet basic costs.
Climate change and ecological devastation
have also played an outsized role in influencing
poverty trends. Puerto Rico serves
as a leading example of this phenomenon:
the island is still struggling to recover from
a devastating hurricane nearly eight months
out, a tragedy compounded by existing
debt and limited funds. On the mainland,
poor communities are more likely to face
Orlando Advocate |Apr 20 - 26, 2018
A sweeping, multi-state anti-poverty
movement kicks off in the age of Trump
By E.A. Crunden
the ramifications of pollution and other
environmental hazards.
According to the report, the pollution,
scarcity, and affordability of water throughout
the United States has also sparked stark
discrepancies: lower-income households
spend seven times the amount on water bills
as their wealthier counterparts.
Those problems endure across the urbanrural
divide — while low-income communities
in cities struggle with expensive bills,
rural areas often lack basic access to sewage
and piping systems. Native American and
Native Alaskan communities, for instance,
represent 13 of the 20 counties with the least
access to plumbing, all of which are rural.
Areas like the South, Midwest, and
Appalachia appear frequently in the report.
Some of the poorest parts of the country,
these regions may have become synonymous
with support for President Trump’s
candidacy but they are among those most
impacted by his administration’s policies.
Of the nearly 2.4 million Americans whose
annual income is too high to qualify for
Medicaid but too low to typically afford
insurance in the marketplace, 89 percent
live in Southern states. These areas are also
home to large communities of color and
immigrant populations disproportionately
threatened by poverty.
But these regions are also home to a
long history of activism. King’s organizing
efforts in states like Alabama and Tennessee
may have spurred the original Poor
People’s Campaign, but modern efforts,
like the “Moral Mondays” movement led
by Rev. Barber in North Carolina, are a sign
that progressive endeavors persist. Led by
Barber and Rev. Liz Theoharis, the listening
tour preceding Tuesday’s launch incorporated
testimonies from areas in Alabama,
West Virginia, Michigan, Mississippi, and
Kentucky — all home to large low-income
populations.
Speakers on Tuesday, including the
study’s authors, emphasized the intersectional
nature of the findings, noting that
poverty impacts millions of Americans
who are white. They also downplayed the
influence of the White House. “We didn’t
get these ideas from any party, left or right,”
Barber said, later adding, “We are not doing
this just because Trump got elected. Even
if he hadn’t been elected, 27 million people
still would not have health care.”
The original Poor People’s Campaign
ultimately proceeded without one of its
key figures: Dr. King was assassinated in
Memphis during a stop meant to draw attention
to the conditions of sanitation workers
in the midst of a strike. To that end, activists
said the new Poor People’s Campaign would
focus on elevating the voices of struggling
communities and would take cues from local
and state movements, rather than national
organizations.
“I am not speaking about the poor, I am
not speaking for the poor,” said Claudia
De la Cruz, an organizer and community
leader from the Bronx in New York City. “I
am the poor.”
The campaign will begin on May 13 and
run until June 21, culminating in a massmobilization
at the U.S. Capitol building.
Speakers said child poverty and the impact
of income inequality on women and people
with disabilities will be among the first
issues they address.