NATIONAL POOR PEOPLE’S ASSEMBLY AND MORAL MARCH THIS SATURDAY
WASHINGTON DIGITAL GATHERING TO BE HELD JUNE 20, 2020
In one week, the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival will host the largest digital gathering of poor and low-income people in this nation’s history
WHAT: Poor and low-income people from throughout the country will testify about their experiences of systemic poverty, systemic racism, the war economy and more, introduced by actors and activists including former Vice President Al Gore, Danny Glover, Erika Alexander, Jane Fonda, David Oyelowo, Wanda Sykes and Debra Messing. The assembly will be streamed on major TV and radio networks, as well as at june2020.org.
WHO: The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, co-chaired by
Rev. Dr. William Barber of Repairers of the Breach and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis of the
Kairos Center, along with hundreds of partner organizations including 14 national
unions, 16 religious denominations and dozens of civil rights, social justice and environmental organizations. See full partner list here.
WHEN: 10 a.m. and 6 p.m., Saturday, June 20th, and 6 p.m. Sunday, June 21st. All times Eastern.
WHERE: This online gathering will be streamed at june2020.org as well as on major TV and radio networks, and will include participants from more than 40 states.
A virtual pressroom will be set up for reporters’ questions on June 20th. Media can register for it here.
WHY: 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 43 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, to implement its Moral Agenda, based on years of policy research and budgetary analysis, and to uphold demands on systemic racism.
Among the impacted people who will speak are service workers from the Midwest who have worked through the pandemic without PPE; a coal miner from Appalachia; mothers who have lost children due to lack of health care, residents of Cancer Alley in Louisiana, and an Apache elder who is petitioning the federal government to stop a corporation from destroying a sacred site in Arizona.
As the nation rightfully continues protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death, the campaign upholds that public policy continues to disproportionately kill people of color and poor and low-income people across the country and that a budget is not simply an allocation of funds, but is a moral document that reflects social values. This digital mass assembly will call for poor and low-income people to build power and register like never before. It presents an opportunity for all people to join together in a united call for justice from wherever they are.
BACKGROUND: In 1968, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and many others launched the Poor People’s Campaign, seeking to build a broad, fusion movement that could unite poor and impacted communities across the country, and organize a “revolution of values” in the United States. In 2018, that call was picked up once again by the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival.
