A New Report and A National Call for Moral Revival

Pundits and journalists have turned to recent Democratic wins in special elections as predictors of national political trends, citing John Ossoff’s defeat in Georgia and last month’s Pennsylvania Congressional race, but the article argues these contests mainly reflect individual candidates and local context.

“Pundits and journalists alike have turned to recent Democratic wins in special elections as predictors of what’s to come in American politics”

New America

The piece warns that focusing on elections overlooks political mobilization outside electoral politics that can have profound national implications.

New America

The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, an organization the author has worked with over the past few months, exemplifies this outside-electoral mobilization by convening mass meetings attended by thousands in over 30 states, forming state-committees, and preparing for 40 days of coordinated, non-violent direct action.

The campaign has deliberately not directed energy toward promoting candidates or party platforms, and its co-chair Reverend William Barber explained why: “Some issues are not left or right or liberal versus conservative; they are right versus wrong.”

As part of their work, the Poor People’s Campaign released a fifty-year assessment report variously named in the article as “The Souls of Poor Folk” and later as “The Souls of Poor Folks,” which connects the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign led by Dr. King, Peggy Terry, Reies Tijerina, Johnnie Tillmon, and a broad coalition of anti-poverty and civil rights groups to present-day movement-building organizations.

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Declaring poverty a national crisis, the report challenges the idea that poverty affects only a small percentage of Americans or is mainly the result of individual decision-making, and it emphasizes that poverty is more than income by linking its causes and effects to racism, militarism, and environmental devastation.

“Pundits and journalists alike have turned to recent Democratic wins in special elections as predictors of what’s to come in American politics”

New America

The article cites key measurements from the report: over 140 million Americans are designated as poor or low-income — roughly 43 percent of the total population; wage rates have stagnated since 1973 despite increased worker productivity; poverty rates for families and individuals in deep poverty (under 50% of the federal poverty line) have increased; low-wage industry growth accounts for the majority of new jobs in the past decade; the top 10 percent of income earners now take in nearly 50 percent of all total income — the highest it’s ever been in the past hundred years; 19 percent of all households have zero or negative net wealth; and student debt has increased by nearly 500 percent since 1999.

The report links these trends to federal cuts in housing, education, healthcare, and welfare spending and to a shift from policies promoting industrial expansion and empowered labor unions toward policies promoting geopolitical interests, corporate profits, and tax cuts for the wealthy.

The article uses the Flint water crisis to illustrate how poverty, racism, and austerity intersect: after mounting municipal debt, statewide legislation removed Flint’s voting representation and installed an emergency manager who then directed the city to switch to a lead-contaminated water source in an attempt to save five million dollars in municipal expenses.

The article notes that Flint’s median household income is under 25,000 dollars and that the city is 57 percent Black and 37 percent white, and it links the crisis to a shrinking tax base, decades of housing exclusion for Black families, and the deployment of militarized policing — Genesee County received over three million dollars of military equipment in the eight years preceding the water crisis.

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Ultimately, “The Souls of Poor Folks” identifies poverty, racism, militarism, and environmental devastation as both political and moral problems and argues that these form a basis for solidarity and a platform for creating new laws and institutions, while cautioning that the campaign will need coordinated, collective action to be successful; the campaign has announced a schedule of 40 days of civil disobedience, beginning May 14th.