Poor People’s Campaign renews Rev. King’s vision

RALEIGH, N.C. — A renewed version of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s campaign to lift poor people is holding its first national mobilization, with actions planned Monday in 32 states and the nation’s capital.

Poor people, clergy and activists in the Poor People’s Campaign plan to deliver letters to politicians in state Capitol buildings demanding that leaders confront a systemic racism that they say is evidenced in voter suppression laws and poverty that hurts minorities, women and children and a large number of whites.

Among those who have signed on to the campaign is the Rev. John Mendez, pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, who recalled protesting in New York City in the 1960s. “I’ve been waiting for almost 50 years for this to actually happen,” said Mendez.

The campaign, led by the Revs. William Barber of North Carolina and Liz Theoharis of New York, officially began Dec. 4, 50 years after King started the first Poor People’s Campaign. King was assassinated a few months later.

The letters to politicians call for a new course in government. “Our faith traditions and state and federal constitutions all testify to the immorality of an economy that leaves out the poor, yet our political discourse consistently ignores the 140 million poor and low-income people in America,” the letter reads.

Barber, who will be among the group that delivers letters to the office of House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said the campaign is building toward a “season of direct action and civil disobedience” that continues through June 21, the anniversary of the murders of three civil rights workers in 1964 in Philadelphia, Miss.

On Feb. 12 — the 50th anniversary of the sanitation workers’ strike that brought King to Memphis, where he was assassinated — fast-food cooks and cashiers plan to walk off their jobs in Memphis to support higher wages and union rights. Protesters plan to march from Clayborn Temple to Memphis City Hall, the same route the sanitation workers took.

U.S. Census figures show that the poverty rate among blacks was 22 percent in 2016, while it was almost 9 percent among whites. But in sheer numbers, almost 17.5 million white people are classified as living in poverty, compared to 8.7 million blacks.