The Poor People's Campaign is Talking, and Some Leading Democrats Are Listening
The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, which first caught the nation’s attention in 2018 with a summer of weekly protests at more than 40 state capitols, has proven in 2020 that if you give them the tools, poor and low-income people won’t just protest—they’ll vote.
“The Poor People’s Campaign contacted (via phone and/or text) more than 2 million mainly poor and low-income infrequent voters,” Poor People’s Campaign Co-Chair Rev. Liz Theoharis told Blue Tent via email. Those calls and texts came from 3,000 trained and registered phone and text bankers in 48 states.
When the PPC called, the Democrats came
Those efforts may have played a role in flipping both Michigan and Wisconsin for President-elect Joe Biden, who attended the organization’s virtual September 14 Moral Monday event, which was watched by more than 1 million people online. The organization says its volunteers contacted more than 150,000 Michigan voters and 21,000 voters in Wisconsin prior to the election. Fifty-four percent of voters from low-income households went on to vote for the President-elect, according to a Nov. 4 "PBS NewsHour" report.
Biden’s attendance at the September 14 event wasn’t his first appearance before the group. In June 2019, nine of the candidates vying for the Democratic nomination appeared at the Poor People’s Campaign Presidential Forum, part of a three-day event that included members of the organization giving testimony before a House congressional hearing. Republican candidates Donald Trump and former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld were invited but didn’t attend.
Shifting the narrative
Contacting more than 2 million voters, appearing before Congress and getting the attention of major presidential contenders would be an impressive enough performance from a two-year-old organization created for and by poor and low-income people, but those efforts were only part of the work done by the group leading into the election.
Other efforts included the Mass Poor People’s Assembly and Moral March on Washington, an online program in June that attracted 2.5 million viewers, Theoharis told Blue Tent, which resulted in nearly 300,000 letters sent to governors and members of Congress to support the organization’s Jubilee Platform. Poor People’s Campaign Senate town halls were held in five states: North Carolina, Alabama, Texas, Mississippi and Kentucky. The Democratic candidates in each race attended the town halls. Again, the Republican candidates, though invited, didn’t attend.
The group has also conducted a nearly weekly Moral Monday March on McConnell “to demand a just COVID-19 stimulus bill that protects people over corporations”; they were addressed during a briefing by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi; and they organized a "Stay in Place, Stay Safe, Organize” campaign in May to pressure states not to re-open prematurely during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a statement to Blue Tent by co-chairs Theoharis and the Rev. William Barber, the leaders said that the goal of their work “ is to continue to shift the narrative about policies that we know work to reduce poverty and address systemic racism.”
“We will do that by continuing to lift the voices of those most directly impacted, challenging Democrats and Republicans to be true to our basic moral and Constitutional values, and building a long-term coalition of grassroots organizations who understand how interlocking injustices must be addressed together to bring about real and lasting change.”
An "organism" for change
In addition to being wildly successful in a very short amount of
time, the Poor People’s Campaign is unique in that it’s not a registered nonprofit. “It’s what we call an organism,” Theoharis said, which is supported by employees from both the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice and Repairers of the Breach. The two Poor People’s Campaign co-chairs, Theoharis and the Rev. William Barber, lead Kairos and Repairers of the Breach, respectively.
The campaign also has a fiscal sponsor, Union Theological Seminary, a 501(c)(3) founded in 1836, which reported assets of more than $100 million in 2016. Union Theological Seminary is also the fiscal sponsor for the Kairos Center. Repairers of the Breach, founded in 2014, is a 501(c)(3) that reported assets of just over $1 million in 2018.
An invitation to funders
While the campaign declined to give specifics about its income or current assets, in an emailed statement, Theoharis said, “Our work is made possible by countless volunteer hours, in-kind contributions from both Repairers of the Breach and Kairos, grants, and mostly grassroots donations from individuals and families across the country; individuals like a woman in New Jersey who made a donation in honor of her late brother who worked a low-wage job all his life.”
The New Jersey woman, Theoharis said, told the campaign in a letter that she was supporting the organization because “I cannot imagine keeping this money for myself in the face of such need in our society. I believe he would have wanted this money to be used to improve life for others who are struggling.”
Given the success of their efforts, Theoharis added, the Poor People’s Campaign hopes that the philanthropic community will “recognize the impact grassroots organizing and movement-building efforts have on our democracy and the overarching struggle for systemic change, and that they commit to investing accordingly,” in part because “the growth of our movement has often outpaced our capacity and resources. We need people with resources to work alongside us.”
Success by the numbers
How has an “organism” composed primarily of poor and low-income people come so far and generated so much interest in just two years? The answer comes down to numbers.
140 million. That’s the number of Americans that are either poor or low-income, according to a report by the Poor People’s Campaign and the Kairos Center.
The next number is 34 million. That’s the number of poor or low-income eligible voters who didn’t vote in 2016, according to a report by an assistant professor at Columbia University.
According to a statement issued by the Poor People’s Campaign about the report’s findings, “If the low-income population were to match the voting rates of higher-income voters, then they would match or exceed the midterm election margins of victory in 16 states.”
The third number is 248. That’s the number of partner organizations that joined to organize the June 2020 Mass Poor People’s Assembly and Moral March on Washington. Those partner organizations came from virtually every corner of the progressive organizing world in the United States, from AFSCME and the American Postal Workers Union to Black Voters Matter, the Buddhist Action Center, CODE PINK, Daily Kos, immigrants rights group RAICES and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.
“I think it is significant that we’ve brought in about 20 national faith bodies, that we have 12 of the largest labor unions in the country, that we have hundreds of partner organizations, but where we started was with just poor and low-income people in the community in states across the country who were coming forward saying, ‘We’ve got to do this,’” Theoharis told Blue Tent.
Organizing the people who are already fighting
Theoharis acknowledges that starting with organizing and giving poor and low-income people leadership voices in their own organization comes with unique challenges, “whether it’s working multiple jobs or being homeless while they help to lead a movement, whether it’s struggling with issues of education equity, all of these things.”
At the same time, though, the impact of issues including food insecurity, housing insecurity and lack of essentials like clean water and basic healthcare also compel people, Theoharis said, “to get involved in solutions and in organizing.” In fact, she said, the campaign has found that poor and low-income people are the very community leaders “who are really in the forefront of work already going on in their community,” from union organizing to the fight to expand Medicaid. The job of the Poor People’s Campaign, she said, is to build a platform for poor people to raise their own issues and demands.
To create that platform, both Repairers of the Breach and the Kairos Center provide their own employees to support the work of Poor People’s Campaign organizers and activists. In addition, the group broadcasts its events on multiple social media platforms and includes call-in numbers so individuals in homeless encampments can call in. Other support efforts have included handing out shopping and gift cards and food while organizing in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and North Carolina.
Taking “nothing less than all of it”
The end goal of this work, Theoharis said, is “a radical redistribution of political and economic power” in the U.S. “Any nation that has nearly half of its population that is in poverty, or [is] one fire, one storm, one healthcare crisis, one job loss away from poverty, is not a stable, secure nation.”
Theoharis cited progress the group has made as reflected in the Democratic Party’s 2020 platform. “You can see that living wages are there, that housing as a right is there, that there’s strong support for voting rights. At the same time, she added, “there’s other places where we have to keep on pushing it.”
“So I think we really claim that by focusing on these issues and by building up a power base of people that are going to take nothing less than all of it. That’s how we can be helping to impact this election and also impacting the policies that get passed,” she said.