The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival has emerged from more than a decade of work by grassroots community and religious leaders, organizations and movements across the nation. We are united together to fight systemic racism, systemic poverty, ecological devastation and the war economy, and to shift the nation’s distorted moral narrative. The Campaign aims to build a broad and deep moral movement – rooted in the leadership of poor people and moral leaders, and reflecting our deepest constitutional and faith traditions – to put before the nation a moral agenda.
50 years ago, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and many others called for a “revolution of values” in America, inviting people who had been divided to stand together against the “triplets of evil”–militarism, racism, and economic injustice–to insist that people need not die from poverty in the richest nation to ever exist. Together with poor people in communities across America–black, white, brown and Native–they responded by building a Poor People’s Campaign. We draw on the history, vision and unfinished work of the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign and take as our task reigniting that campaign to unite the poor, disenfranchised, and marginalized to take action together and become what Dr. King called “a new and unsettling force in our complacent national life.”
The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival will necessarily be a multi-year undertaking. This spring, the Campaign has launched and will engage in 40 Days of Moral Action here in CT and across the nation. By engaging in highly publicized, non-violent moral fusion direct action, over a 6-week period in at least 40 states and the District of Columbia between May 13th and June 23rd, the Campaign will force a serious national and statewide examination of the enmeshed evils of systemic racism, systemic poverty, ecological devastation and the war economy during a key election year while strengthening and connecting informed and committed grassroots leadership in every state, increasing their power to continue this fight long after the campaign ends. During these 40 days of Moral Action, the Campaign will push forward a concrete moral agenda, and draw on art, music, popular education and religious traditions to challenge the nation’s distorted moral narrative.
Each week during the 40 days will focus on different themes:
- Week 1 (May 13-19) – Somebodies Hurting Our People: Child poverty, Women, and People with Disabilities
- Week Two (May 20-26) – Linking Systemic Racism
and Poverty: Voting Rights and Immigration - Week Three (May 27-June 2) – The War Economy, Veterans, Education and Our National Priorities
- Week Four (June 3-9) – Ecological Devastation and Health
- Week Five (June 10-16) – Everybody’s Got the Right to Live: Jobs, Income and Housing
- Week Six (June 17-22) – A New and Unsettling Force
- June 23rd – Mass rally in Washington, D.C. and Global Day of Solidarity
Our Connecticut Coordinating Committee is led by Tri Chairs, Bishop John Selders, Lady Pamela Selders (Moral Monday CT) and Ms. Jackie Allen Doucot (Hartford Catholic Worker). Please join us in standing together as we make the demands of the poor and dispossessed known to our failing leaders everywhere. We anticipate that this season of moral action can be used by all of us to send a clear and powerful message that the destruction and degradation of this system knows no boundaries and that the poor of the world are coming together to stand against it and build something new and better.