As my commitment to a weekly contribution to an organization working for racial justice in the US for the month of June was coming to a close, I decided that – in order to remain more involved – I will select an organization to support on a monthly basis. The first group I have chosen is The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival.
The Poor People’s Campaign is centered around a caring, common-sense, heart-based – what they call a moral – agenda to respect and thereby improve the lives of people that US policies have systematically attacked and disempowered.
Its platform identifies legislative and policy priorities grounded in five principles:
1. We need a moral revolution of values to repair the breach in our society.
2. Everybody in, nobody out.
3. When you lift from the bottom, everybody rises.
4. Prioritize the leadership of the poor, low-income, and most impacted.
5. Debts that cannot be paid must be relieved.
Their demands include:
1. Protecting and expanding the right to vote.
2. Consequences for abuses of police power, and justice for families and communities who have been harmed and terrorized by police violence must be a matter of law.
3. Demilitarizing the police. Ending mass incarceration. Stopping criminalizing the poor.
4. Establishing real security by taking care of our health needs in the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond and address the poverty and disinvestment in our communities that brought us to this point.
5. Working with frontline movements and impacted communities, establish a National Truth Commission on the violence of systemic racism.
I find Reverend Dr. William Barber II so inspiring and the Campaign consolidates so much of what is needed to make the US a decent home for all of us.
This is possible – the 2019 Poor People’s Moral Budget found that “The United States has abundant resources for an economic revival that will move towards establishing a moral economy.”
Their vision for the United States is one that makes our world more beautiful. Not just for some, but for everyone. (and as I wrote that, this song did come into my head).
I invite you to learn more about their work and support them and these principles.
Beautiful World 