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Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
Lives cut short from poverty and low-wealth is a moral indictment of a society that is abandoning millions amid abundance.
In the richest country in human history, poverty has become a death sentence. Yes, despite the fact that the United States throws out more food than is needed to feed every hungry person, that the nation spends more and has more cutting edge developments in health care than any other nation, and despite the GDP growing exponentially over the past years, poverty is the fourth largest killer. Poor people can expect to die 12 or 13 years sooner than rich people in the US, with the death rate gap between rich and poor increasing by 570% since 1980.
In a recent series on declining life expectancy, the Washington Postreports that, “The United States is failing at a fundamental mission—keeping people alive.” This new series shows that the US has a significantly lower life expectancy than other nations with similar economic development. The Postcontinues, “America is increasingly a country of haves and have-nots, measured not just by bank accounts and property values but also by vital signs and grave markers. Dying prematurely, The Post found, has become the most telling measure of the nation’s growing inequality.”
For too long, poverty has been pushed from the national agenda. For too long, corporate profits have been put before people.
This death measurement indeed is telling. It paints a picture of a country with the resources to raise wages, end homelessness, expand health care, and invest in child care and other needed resources to help struggling families but refuses to do so. It demonstrates a society (with Congress as the speartip) that keeps proposing cuts to health care, food assistance, education, and more even after policy experts have shown that such cuts result in suffering and death.
As theologians and preachers, we know this is not just a health crisis (although Medicaid cuts that could throw as many as 24 million off its rolls is most definitely a healthcare emergency of epic proportions). Lives cut short by poverty and low-wealth is a moral indictment of a society that is abandoning millions amid abundance.
In September, the US Census published the most recent poverty numbers. The US Census report marks a significant increase of the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) from 2021 to 2022, nearly doubling child poverty in the most significant growth in child poverty since the SPM was adopted. These numbers show that 41% of the US population is poor or low-income; 135 million people cannot afford a couple hundred dollar emergency. This reality is an emergency, and anyone who claims to value life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness must treat it as such.
This crisis of poverty and low-wealth requires an emergency response. It requires an emergency meeting between poor and low-income leaders, clergy, economists, public policy experts and the president of the United States at the White House to hear stories and solutions to poverty and policy murder.
It is calling us to a season of direct action, including moral assemblies at state capitols across the country, imploring our elected leaders to support an agenda that tackles poverty and other systemic injustices because there are policy solutions to all of these problems. The Third Reconstruction we are building towards is a revival of our constitutional commitment to establish justice, provide for the general welfare, end decades of austerity, and recognize that policies that center the 140 million poor and low-income people in the country are also good economic policies that can heal and transform the nation.
It means we are committing to convene and converge on Washington D.C. on June 15, 2024 for a Mass Poor People’s and Low-Wage Workers Assembly and Moral March on Washington. And it compels a massive get out the vote effort to enliven and enlarge the electorate of poor and low-wealth voters who hold the power to shift the political calculus of the nation and vote for truth and life and love and justice.
For too long, poverty has been pushed from the national agenda. For too long, corporate profits have been put before people. For too long, we have heard the false narrative that poverty may be unfortunate but inevitable and poor people are to blame for their poverty and if people just worked harder and prayed more, they would not be poor anymore. But as Ms. Yara Allen writes in the anthem of our movement, The Poor People's Campaign, “Somebody’s been hurting our people, people are dying from poverty and policy murder, it’s gone on for too long, and we won’t be silent anymore.”
Fire Drill Fridays--the climate action protest launched three years ago by actor and activist Jane Fonda--returned Friday morning to Washington, D.C., where participants rallied and marched against U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin's "dirty deal" while demanding President Joe Biden declare a climate emergency.
"What we do or fail to do in the next eight to 10 years to cut our fossil fuel emissions in half will determine how much of a livable future we will have."
"Organizing does not stop after an election, does it? We must hold the folks we got into office accountable to us, not to oil companies, because the fossil fuel industry does not stop, so we can never stop," Fonda told demonstrators gathered in Freedom Plaza near the White House.
"Time is running out. Scientists are telling us we are in our last decade of action," she added. "What we do or fail to do in the next eight to 10 years to cut our fossil fuel emissions in half will determine how much of a livable future we will have. So this is the time. This is the time for bold action before it's too late. And that's exactly why we are here right now."
Inspired by activists including Fridays for Future founder Greta Thunberg, Moral Mondays co-founder Bishop William J. Barber II, and author Naomi Klein, Fonda started Fire Drill Fridays in 2019 in collaboration with Greenpeace USA. Fonda and other activists were arrested for civil disobedience during the protests, which continued until the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic the following year, when the demonstrations went online.
\u201cLIVE: Tune in to the @FireDrillFriday #ClimateEmergency Rally with @JaneFonda and movement allies in D.C! \ud83d\udd25\ud83d\udc4f\n\nYou won\u2019t want to miss this day of inspiration and action with special guests as we sound the alarm on the climate crisis! https://t.co/hI3u3emk3K\u201d— Greenpeace USA (@Greenpeace USA) 1669996324
The activists took aim at Manchin's so-called dirty deal, proposed permitting modifications favorable to the fossil fuel industry that, while left out of a stopgap funding bill in September, could be revived if the West Virginia Democrat successfully includes it in the next National Defense Authorization Act--which lawmakers are working to pass by the end of the year.
Jerome Foster II--a member of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council and, at 20, the youngest-ever presidential adviser--told demonstrators that by being there, they were showing that "the time is now to vote out the politicians like Joe Manchin that are having the dirty deal perpetuated and who think that their pollution and their profits are more important than our lives."
"They chose pollution of their children. They chose profits over our future. And we are tired of having to come here and demand the bare minimum," Foster added.
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) spoke at the demonstration, declaring, "We cannot develop any more fossil fuel infrastructure."
"You know what's in that dirty deal? The Mountain Valley Pipeline for fossil gas," he continued. "And it would mow down every single environmental law in the process... We've got to keep it out of the National Defense Authorization Act... And no dirty deal in any continuing resolution or any other budget bill."
Merkley added that "we need President Biden to declare a climate emergency" and "use all the powers of the federal government to respond to this biggest test of humanity."
\u201cMaria Lopez-Nu\u00f1ez of @IronboundCC + @CJAOurPower just gave an incredibly powerful testimony against Manchin\u2019s #DirtyDeal at @JaneFonda\u2019s #FireDrillFridays in DC.\n\nEvery member of Congress should watch this clip + decide: Will they stand w/ people or w/ big polluters? #NoDirtyDeal\u201d— Collin Rees (@Collin Rees) 1670001106
Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) told the protesters that "this Manchin dirty deal unfortunately is not unique. There are other dirty deals that threaten the health of people for profit margins."
"We cannot address climate change," he added, "if the balance of power is such that oil and gas interests control the agenda."
Nearly 100 women from 42 states were arrested Monday as they participated in a Washington, D.C. march demanding legislation to safeguard voting rights and deliver relief to poor and marginalized Americans.
"We're planting seeds today. And we are building the movement that will give our children and the next generations the life that they deserve."
--Kenia Alcocer, Poor People's Campaign
Religious News Servicereports the arrests occurred during the Women's Moral Monday March on Washington, which was organized by leaders of the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, a modern-day continuation of Martin Luther King Jr.'s Poor People's March on Washington led by Rev. Drs. William Barber II and Liz Theoharis.
Monday's event marked the anniversary of the 1848 Seneca Falls Women's Convention, the first women's rights convention in the U.S. Theoharis--who was arrested at the event--told RNS that "173 years later, we are still being denied voting rights."
"If we are trying to make the country a more perfect nation, it will take the leadership of all people--including women," she said.
The march was part of the Poor People's Campaign's Season of Nonviolent Moral Direct Action, which began earlier this month and will continue until August.
\u201cBREAKING: Protesters at the #PoorPeoplesCampaign Women's #MoralMonday March on Washington being arrested - including @MsJodieEvans of @codepink, @rahnamepting of @MoveOn, & @UniteThePoor leaders from Texas, Kansas, Pennsylvania, New York & other states. \n\nhttps://t.co/bl0JmZbiQE\u201d— Poor People's Campaign (@Poor People's Campaign) 1626711067
The event began outside the U.S. Supreme Court. Demonstrators then marched down First Street to the U.S. Capitol.
According to RNS:
Monday's protesters wore sashes with the group's demands emblazoned on them--demands also outlined in a statement signed by 100 women leaders from across the country. They had four: to end the filibuster; to pass all the provisions of the For the People Act; to fully restore the 1965 Voting Rights Act; and to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.
These demands are part of the campaign's direct actions leading up to August 6, the 56th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. On July 5 Barber... called for a month of "Moral Mondays"--days of nonviolent direct action and protest at state capitols and in D.C.--to save democracy and protest autocracy.
Police began detaining event organizers after they obstructed traffic on First Street. The women were released later in the day.
\u201cWomen from across the nation are being arrested right now in Washington, DC, for protesting to end the filibuster, pass the For The People Act, fully restore the Voting Rights Act, and raise the federal minimum wage to $15/hr.\n\nJoin them now in solidarity: https://t.co/X6CB06v0QL\u201d— Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II (@Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II) 1626712078
"Our democracy is in peril," Theoharis said in a statement. "In this time, when our voting rights are under attack, and economic justice is being denied, we must and so we are, calling out the immoral obstructionism of Congress."
Event moderator Kenia Alcocer of the national Poor People's Campaign said: "We're planting seeds today. And we are building the movement that will give our children and the next generations the life that they deserve."
"We don't want to survive," added Alcocer, "we want to thrive."
\u201cThe Women\u2019s Moral Monday March electrified Capitol Hill today, demanding the Senate: 1) End the filibuster; 2) Pass HR1; 3) Restore the 1965 VRA; 4) Pass $15\n\nMore on the Poor People's Campaign Season of Nonviolent Direct Action: https://t.co/oaz5fBCGt4\u201d— Sarah Anderson (@Sarah Anderson) 1626724641
Marianne Smith, chair of the Poor People's Campaign in Oklahoma, said: "I carry with me today the voices of all the poor and low wealth, women, children, and marginalized citizens of Oklahoma. Rather than seeing an improvement I'm witnessing a decline in the rights and opportunities for the generations behind me. We're demanding equal rights."
Barber said that "in this season when extremists have committed themselves to voter up suppression, we cannot let the forces of greed destroy the very rights you had before you could even comprehend them."
"We cannot, and we will not," added Barber. "We are here today to say that the gutting of the Voting Rights Act in 2013 and the obstruction of [Senate Minority Leader] Mitch McConnell [R-Ky.] that has prevented Congress from restoring it for over eight years, has undermined and eroded our democracy. We don't want some of our justice, we want all of our justice. It's kind of like being pregnant, either you are or you're not."
\u201c\u201cThrough this season of nonviolent direct actions we will continue to escalate our public pressure for change. We invite partners & all people who believe in justice & democracy to join us in this critical moment in history\u2026\u201d @RevDrBarber \ud83d\udcf7 by J. Heeney https://t.co/Abx7DHNlNs\u201d— Repairers of the Breach (@Repairers of the Breach) 1626724130
Next week, the Poor People's Campaign will shift its focus from Washington, D.C. to state capitals, including a "Selma-to-Montgomery style, four-day march" from Georgetown, Texas to Austin.