Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II’s Poor People’s campaign has its roots in liberation politics in the South.
But the group is also pursuing a more modern approach to change that relies in part on funding from outside donors and foundations whose generosity powers the “revolution of values” the campaign states is its driving motivation.
Barber’s North Carolina-based Repairers of the Breach forms the backbone of the campaign, which has been a mover and shaker in nationwide politics by creating coalitions for protest and advocacy on the part of the poor.
“From Alaska to Arkansas, the Bronx to the border, people are coming together to confront the interlocking evils of systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation, militarism and the war economy, and the distorted moral narrative of religious nationalism,” the group declares in its mission statement. “We understand that as a nation, we are at a critical juncture — that we need a movement that will shift the moral narrative, impact policies and elections at every level of government, and build lasting power for poor and impacted people.”
A storied history
The campaign is based on the original Poor People’s Campaign, which was founded by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during the last year of his life.
The original campaign was developed as a multiracial political organization targeting what King felt was a society that refused to take seriously its obligations to its least fortunate.
The new campaign was launched in 2018, 50 years after the first one, as a response to the ongoing inequality in U.S. society.
“Lots of people—poor people, white people, black people, Latinos—they’ve been bamboozled into thinking we’re all on different teams,” Barber told the Washington Post on June 22, 2018. “We need to love them enough to go there and show them the truth.”
Since the “40 days of civil disobedience” that ushered in the campaign’s second coming, the group has grown to have chapters in over 40 states.
Foundation cash powers the movement
With that growth has come increased funding. Repairs of the Breach, founded in 2015, saw massive donations in 2018 as it launched the campaign: $1,550,000 in two donations that year from Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, $750,000 from the Wellspring Philanthropic Fund, $500,000 from the Ford Foundation, $150,000 from the Foundation to Promote Open Society, and $100,000 each from the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees and the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.
That influx of cash helped the campaign make an impact around the country as the midterm elections approached and the national progressive movement flexed its muscles. The campaigners and their allies traveled the nation and were arrested in a number of cities and states, along with 2,000 other nonviolent demonstrators.
Progressive impact
The impact of the movement is difficult to tease out in narrow terms from the broader progressive efforts that it’s a part of, but the overall push to improve the lives of the poor that the campaign prioritizes—the Fight for $15, immigrant rights, racial justice—all have become major policies in the new progressive movement on the Democratic Party’s left flank.
And with a Biden administration around the corner, the opportunities for making a stand on positions that center the needs of the poor and marginalized are just as important to keep the pressure on.
Barber told KUNM in early October that he believes the protest movement is itself the defining reason for hope in recent years, and one that shows the idealism of the movement.
“The protest is the hope,” said Barber. “It means people do not believe that this democracy is beyond being changed and fixed and being made better.”
