Week 2 of the Poor People's Campaign
The Poor People's Campaign launched a six-week program, calling for a moral revival in the U.S. Week two focuses on linking systemic racism and poverty.
Calling undocumented immigrants “animals.”
Targeting African-American voters with “almost surgical precision,” disenfranchising entire populations.
Native Americans facing “very high rates of discrimination in everyday life,” like these lacrosse teams kicked out of their league for reporting racial abuse.
Finding ways — through travel bans, changes in refugee admissions policies, and more — to exclude Muslims from the American populace.
Observing a rise in anti-Latino and anti-Muslim hate crimes corresponding with presidential nativist tweets.
These and other ongoing developments — as recent as two days ago and reaching as far back as centuries — illustrate what this summer’s Poor People’s Campaign is challenging.
The theme for Week Two of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival is “linking systemic racism and poverty: voting rights, immigration, xenophobia, Islamophobia, and the mistreatment of indigenous communities.”
The power of the Poor People’s Campaign lies in its realization of a comprehensive moral vision, voice, and community. As the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said in 1967, the year before launching the original Poor People’s Campaign, “Somewhere we must see that justice is indivisible. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, and I have fought too long and too hard against segregated public accommodations to end up, at this point in my life, segregating my moral concerns.”
Systemic racism and poverty are two evils which, together, unleash myriad assaults against many in U.S. society: immigrants, Muslims, foreigners, those perceived to be foreign, indigenous communities, people of color, and those who are socioeconomically impoverished.
The Poor People’s Campaign speaks truth to power in identifying these assaults as neither disparate, discrete, unrelated, nor accidental. Rather, they are precisely calibrated to set societal temperatures. They reveal who is seen and treated as marginal; who is cut out of the social fabric; whose voices are silenced; whose lives are told that they do not matter.
In the face of this reality, the Poor People’s Campaign calls together a new moral majority. Centering the voices and experiences of those whom systemic racism and poverty would exclude, the Campaign lists a multitude of issues and assaults as our moral agenda. The staggering breadth of issues and assaults is indeed the point. To take just one in isolation, and to not make the connection to others, is to miss the point and problem entirely.
The UMC Book of Resolutions reflects this comprehensive moral vision, voice, and community through statements such as:
- 3126, Prejudice Against Muslims and Arabs in the USA
- 3281, Welcoming the Migrant to the US
- 3321, Native People and the United Methodist Church
- 3378, Racism and Economic Injustice Against People of Color in the US
- 6028, Global Migration and the Quest for Justice
Put your faith into action by joining a local Poor People’s Campaign action in the coming weeks. Search on Facebook or the campaign website to find your local campaign and its events. Be it a teach-in, justice arts action, nonviolent civil disobedience training and action, or other gathering, band together with us as we raise our collective voice and publicly demonstrate for justice.
