Welcome to Progressive Pockets! I go by GG, that’s short for Genet Gimja. This is a show about our money and our power and what we want to do with it beyond ourselves. What do we want for our communities? What do we want for our country? And for our world? What’s our place in all of this?

Today’s episode is about the Poor People’s Campaign. Sound familiar? You might be thinking about the ORIGINAL Poor People’s Campaign back in the 1960s that was led by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. You will recall from episode 107 that Dr. King had some radical money beliefs. In fact, he was assassinated while he was working on the Poor People’s Campaign. Don’t let the Hallmark cards fool you. He, alongside other civil rights leaders, was working on some projects that would have absolutely overturned the way our country is run.

So let’s talk about the original Poor People’s Campaign. Here are the basics.

So that’s the brief history of the original Poor People’s Campaign. I’ll include lots of good links in the show notes if you want to do a deeper dive.

In 2018, the current Poor People’s Campaign launched with an expanded name. It is called The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for a Moral Revival.

The leaders are Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis.

So both campaigns share a common goal of addressing poverty and economic inequality in America through nonviolent direct action and moral witness. The current campaign builds on the legacy of the 1968 campaign.

So let’s talk about outcomes and what’s next.

In 1968, they were pushing for the $30 Billion package of reforms and the economic bill of rights, there was limited success on that. Its hard to imagine that the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King didn’t halt the momentum that the movement was gaining. And it wasn’t just that, J. Edgar Hoover felt threatened by the movement and between the federal surveillance and the government trying to infiltrate the movement, the campaign just didn’t achieve as much as it really could have, and should have. Robert F. Kennedy was killed too, and that was probably also harmful to the campaign.

But some good things did come out of that movement. For example, you may be familiar with the Children’s Defense Fund, that was an outgrowth of the original campaign. 

A few months after the massive tent city protest, food programs were launched in the 1,000 neediest counties, identified by the campaign. A supplementary food program for mothers and children was also in progress by the end of the year. Also, Congress appropriated $243 million to expand and revamp school lunches to help feed hungry children. That’s from the Smithsonian’s website. Also this-

Congress extended existing labor programs, and the Senate approved an additional $5 million for Head Start (shout out to all the other Head Start alumni out there) and $13 million for summer jobs. Congress approved $139 million for the Bureau of Indian Affairs’s education and welfare services. 

So no, the 1968 campaign didn’t achieve its ambitious goals, but it definitely moved the needle in multiple regards. And this 2018 revamping seems to be getting some traction, they say they are seeing the passage of Medicaid expansion in several states and I’m looking forward to seeing more from this campaign.

What’s next? Well, the campaign is calling on Christians, Muslims, Jews, nonbelievers, blacks, Latinos, poor whites, feminists, environmentalists, and others to heed the call. Maybe that’s you? A list of actions are included on their website, poor people’s campaign dot org. I’ll include the link in the show notes and I’ll of course include more information in the newsletter too.

So to recap, here’s what we covered today:

If you have more time today, here’s another episode to check out, it is about Dr. King’s Radical Money Beliefs, that is episode 107.

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Let’s end with a quote and this comes from one of the co-leaders of the current Poor People’s Campaign, Rev. Dr. William Barber, he said 

“We must shock this nation with the power of love, we must shock this nation with the power of mercy,” he said. “We can’t give up on the heart of our democracy, not now, not ever!”

Let’s talk again soon!