June 19, 2020
The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival is releasing a comprehensive policy platform designed to heal the nation on Saturday in conjunction with its digital social justice assembly.
The Poor People’s Moral Justice Jubilee Policy Platform is a sweeping, transformational response to the needs and demands of the 140 million people who are poor or low-income and are struggling to make ends meet in this country. In the richest country in the world, 700 people a day die from poverty – 250,000 people a year. Those numbers were a reality even before COVID-19. The Poor People’s Campaign centers its demands around the five interlocking injustices of systemic racism, systemic poverty, ecological devastation, the war economy and militarism and a distorted moral narrative of religious nationalism.
“This is not a left or right agenda, but a moral fusion agenda, rooted in our deepest moral and Constitutional values,” said Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, co-chair of the Campaign. “This agenda makes it clear that the failure to address the interlocking injustices costs lives and is morally indefensible, constitutionally inconsistent and economically insane.”
The platform is being released at 7 a.m. Saturday, June 20, ahead of the Campaign’s digital Mass Poor People’s Assembly and Moral March on Washington.
It indicates the Campaign’s policy and legislative priorities around voting rights, police violence, indigenous rights, immigrant rights, education, welfare, jobs, education, housing, water, war, wealth inequality and more.
“We have been putting this nation’s abundant resources into punishing, criminalizing and killing the poor,” said Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, co-chair of the campaign. “We need to be building a society where everybody can survive and, more than that, thrive.”
After years of organizing across 45 states, the campaign continues to shift the narrative on what is necessary and possible. As the country approaches the July 4th birthday of the nation, the Moral Justice Jubilee Platform takes up the moral and Constitutional values of this country and reminds us all of the country we have yet to be.
The Campaign is co-sponsored by Repairers of the Breach, whose president is Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, and the Kairos Center, whose director is Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis.
The Moral Justice Jubilee Policy Platform will be available at: http://bit.ly/ppcjubilee
Contact: Martha Waggoner | [email protected] | 919-295-0802
Reporters can register here for our virtual press room.
For additional information: June2020.org / poorpeoplescampaign.org
Twitter: @UniteThePoor / Instagram: @poorpeoplescampaign / Facebook: @ANewPPC
The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, is building a generationally transformative digital gathering called the Mass Poor People’s Assembly and Moral March on Washington, on June 20, 2020. At that assembly, we will demand that both major political parties address the interlocking injustices of systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation, militarism and the distorted moral narrative of religious nationalism by implementing our Moral Agenda.