The Poor People's Campaign Update
I went to another organizing event in L.A. and they are setting up workshops for non- violent civil disobedience training. The upcoming 40 day event is being promoted as:
A Season of Nonviolent Moral Fusion Direct Action from May 13th to June 23rd
The Poor People's Campaign is focused on raising awareness on four problems:
1.) Challenging systemic racism
2.) Poverty
3.) The war economy
4.) Environmental degradation
Here is a List of Fundamental Principles
I asked if someone would be posting some videos and notable quotes from MLK's original event that were referenced, but it hasn't happened yet. Here are snippets I noted, but couldn't get the attribution written down quickly enough:
. . . strength can only spring from an organized coalition of poor people that cuts across ethnic, racial and geographic lines.
They were fighting the same battle against identity politics and media propaganda:
The wealthy elite have divided poor people along racial, ethnic and religious lines to diminish our voices and our power.
There was a photo of a terrific banner:
Fight Poverty - Not The Poor
There will be civil disobedience training workshops across the country next month. Here is So Cal's workshop:
We also ask if you can save the date for Saturday, April 14 from 9:30 a.m. - 2:30 p.m. This is the date of our big national and statewide training where we will get more intormation and strategy on the specifics of the 40 Days of NVMFDA.
The training will take place at First Congregational Church, 2555 Santiago St., Santa Ana, CA 92706. For anyone interested in participating in the NVMFDA during the 40 days, or who has already signed up to this on their PPC pledge card, this is a mandatory training. More details will be coming soon. Please make sure you can attend this national training if you are interested in joining us for the 40 days!
To find a location near you sign up here:
Here's an earlier diary I wrote with a link at the bottom to an Alternet article:
And an article at The Institute for Policy Studies which is assisting the Poor People's Campaign:
Report: The Poor People's Campaign 50 Years Later
Auditing America 50 Years After the Poor People's Campaign Challenged System Racism, Poverty, Militarism, and our National Morality.
Comments
Institute for Policy Studies Report
The link has a brief synopsis of their report and PDF download for the full report, which I am now reading. Here's a snippet on how military spending impacts vital domestic spending:
[Edit to add Table of Contents for the report:
[end edit]
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
Thanks for the continued updates.
I'm pleased to read this and look forward to seeing how it develops.
"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"
- Kurt Vonnegut
Great Potential
I'm hoping all of the protests and strikes add momentum to this unique event.
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
I like the way this is framed
Among all people, poverty, the lowest common denominator.
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
Appreciate the update - thanks!
And I hope people are being also trained to deal with propagandists
Speaking of poor people, listen to this guy explain why what he says is actually 222 trillion in US debt (remember all of those missing trillions from the Pentagon and other areas, the ongoing War On The World, as well as what's been bled from the public both personally in wages, etc. and the public purse, while taxes are too much to ask from billionaires and corporations?) has to actually come out of the healthcare and pensions of the elderly. He says that America is 'too generous to their elderly'.
He does admit that banksters are a problem - but nothing about the trillions blown on war-crimes and corporate/uber-wealthy welfare or any number of other issues while the country crumbles and the people starve.
This after one of the warmongers stated that the impoverished American public was going to have to 'sacrifice' for even more military spending in mugging other people's countries to steal their stuff.
On the other hand, it is stated that this guy is reputed to be an economist, rather than being a reputable one - but what is this nonsense doing on RT? It smells like more US PTB propaganda.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFdYT8OI6b0
We know the direction that the money flowed, and it certainly wasn't to the poor and elderly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XkTFlh_5eU
The Poor People's Campaign couldn't be more timely in this educational program - at least, without having a time machine.
Edit for a letter-typo. Lol, and another edit for another one. Any more will have to be creative spelling or something.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Greece
is in a terrible situation because its debt is denominated in Euros. The US can't get into the shape Greece is in. US debt is denominated in dollars. The US can create the money it needs to cover its debts. People holding Treasuries will not be happy about being paid back with dollars worth less than the dollars they invested. And the US is likely to pay substantially higher interest rates on future borrowing. The value of the dollar will decline causing price increases in foreign goods. That's painful, but not all bad. It may improve our balance of payments and make American goods more competitive abroad.
But the only way the US will be in danger of defaulting is if a majority in one of the chambers of congress throws a temper tantrum.
Thanks for the post MM.
I've seen some movement for this in Oregon as well. Training events coming soon.
I know several folks that will be participating in the Willamette valley. To me, it is a positive response in a sea of negative choices our country is making. I'll join them as I can. All the best to you.
Alms for the poor.
Arms for the poor. (All volunteer military)
The reason that Charlie Rangel has steadfastly argued for restoration of the draft.
poverty?
Poor choice of words. What's wrong with income inequality? Poverty is a divisive word. When we recruited poverty/low income people for job training programs, we never used either of those words. First, no one wants to be poor and therefore few claim it. They will automatically screen themselves out as not eligible. Secondly, who and what is poor?
United States has roughly six social classes:
Upper class.
New money.
Middle class.
Working class.
Working poor.
Poverty level.
So if I'm an 18+ legal adult and HSG working a minimum wage job and living in the basement of my middle-class parents' home, does that mean I'm not poor enough based on my parents' income and therefore can't qualify for programs that are reserved for poverty populations? E.G., remedial classes, life skills training, job training, PELL, work study, etc. What if I'm 45 working three jobs, none with benefits, and my income puts me $100 over your definition of poor?
Social Security is a popular program because everyone pays and everyone benefits. Free university for ALL is another policy that brings everyone together. The minute a program, movement, law singles out favor or remedy to only one segment of a population it creates resentment in everyone left out. It becomes just more identity politics. The sound of "I work and pay for my own, why do I have to give you my money" is heard from the rooftops. It was and is my object to BLM. No matter how hard the left sneers at it, ALM is a legitimate response. gjohnsit has published multiple articles with statistics that show victims of police killings and abuse are not limited to a color but a social class.
I don't mean any of this personally, and I appreciate your effort and the groups intent. But the agenda sounds like a bunch of stuck in the mud, liberal Hillbamabots, who learned nothing from Bernie's inclusive agenda, created it. They might as well dig up Lyndon Johnson and call it the Great War on Poverty. Identity politics are so divisive, and I just hate it when well-intentioned people perpetuate them. Until we find a way to join together, they will always divide and conquer. Thanks for your hard work.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
It is building on MLK's work 50 years ago...
...and using his language -
https://poorpeoplescampaign.org/index.php/poor-peoples-campaign-1968/
I taught in a small town country school between Sand Mt. and Lookout Mt. for most of my career. Every year at the start of school they hold a day or two of teacher torture session where they waste your time when you need to work on your classroom etc. (Later in my career I learned to skip these sessions and if questioned would reply - "I'm a professional and I know what I need to do to develop.")
So one year they have this motivational speaker who starts out asking, "Who's from the country?". Well not a one of the largely hillbilly teacher population raised their hand. They had been to college and saw themselves as urbane...not country. Same deal with not wanting to identify with being poor.
I think the goal of this project is to connect the historical aspect of our constant struggle while pushing forward...really for all people not just the poor. It has always puzzled me how the rich fail to see that if we all do better they will too.
My 2 cents about the language involved.
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
The problem is that most Americans
. . . . know little or nothing about Dr. King's campaign of 50 years ago. Thus, most Americans will not make the connection with Dr. King when they hear about this campaign, especially in light of the fact that the corporate media and the educational system have sanitized King's image in the popular mind into making him merely a racial justice activist, as opposed to a radical critic of the whole economic system.
I also have doubts about it being a wise strategy to call it a "poor person's campaign."
Thank you.
MLK is seen through that myopic lens. Build on history? Christ, that's another no stater. Most people can't even tell you about current events. Sounds like grandpa walking to school barefoot five miles in the snow. This is so being over thought.
Not that the list couldn't be longer, but the glory of Bernie's agenda is that is was so simple and so inclusive (non-divisive). That really needs to be the goal.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
Something to consider:
Perhaps at these types of events--including planning events--it would be a good idea to always be on the look out for deep state infiltrators/spies and/or potential agent provocateurs.
Call me paranoid and suspicious. But I put NOTHING past those in power when it comes to maintaining their positions and prerogatives. NOTHING. No scheme is too dastardly or underhanded for them.
For example, I've read too much history about how these types of protest events that are supposed to be non-violent end up getting derailed (and discredited) by groups of people that end up becoming very violent and destructive. My earliest knowledge of this happening was in Memphis in 1968, when Dr. King's "non-violent" march in support of the striking sanitation workers was disrupted and discredited by a violent group of black young men who started smashing store windows. This was written about in William Pepper's "Orders to Kill."
(Speaking of a "poor persons' campaign" and Dr. King, remember that it was not long after Dr. King announced his poor persons' march on D.C. that he was assassinated. That's how threatening to the system Dr. King's plan was. What has changed that would make any such similar technique any less threatening to the system today?)
Thus, it might help to have mechanisms put in place by the organizers whereby they document such events, and perhaps even engage in citizen arrests of such people who engage in illegal actions, even going so far as doing things like stripping off their masks once they are apprehended, photographing them, and taking down their information from their wallets.
The other thing is to make sure that if this event goes forward, then the organizers should have their own alternative media apparatii in place to document it and publicize it in real time, for certainly, the corporate media isn't going to do a good/fair job of reporting on it.
*sigh*
Someone please help me not be seriously concerned by the inclusion of "systemic racism". "Systemic" and "institutional" are two words that I've come to immediately associate with the recent crypto-totalitarianism that redefines "racist" as "not-racist", "not-racist" as "racist", "tunnel-vision" as "inclusivity", and so on and so forth - why isn't "racism", sans qualifiers, good enough?
Qualification: I can understand "institutional racism" as "the momentum of history's unfinished business", like how the War on Drugs was primarily a war on poor black people, or how slavery and Jim Crow left black people with an ongoing economic disadvantage. "Systemic" racism, though...why does that term even need to exist, and why do I never hear it outside of contexts like the one described at the beginning of this: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0103-williams-black-victim-se... ?
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!