Earlier this week UFPJ National Organizer George Friday, National Co-conveners Jackie Cabasso and Terry Rockefeller, and various UFPJ affiliates, met in Washington, DC at the Poor People’s Campaign Moral Congress, which on Monday released its Moral Budget. The Moral Budget, among other things, calls for $350 Billion in annual cuts to the military – far more than other “progressive” budgets! According to Jackie, the Poor People’s Campaign Moral Congress was “inspiring, deep and profound.” United for Peace & Justice is proud to be an endorsing partner of The Poor People’s Campaign, A National Call for Moral Revival.
The Poor People’s Campaign is asking everyone to sign a Petition demanding that at least one LIVE televised 2020 presidential debate that focuses on the five interlocking injustices of systemic poverty, racism, ecological devastation, the war economy and militarism, and religious white nationalism be held.
Please Sign The Petition.
The United for Peace & Justice Coordinating Committee
Message from the Poor People’s Campaign, A National Call for Moral Revival
When we first started dreaming about making poor and impacted people the center of a presidential forum and congressional hearing, we didn’t know it would get this big.
We had about a thousand people from more than 40 states. In just three days, we released our Moral Budget, hosted a presidential candidates forum in which Campaign members posed questions to nine 2020 candidates, held a National Freedom School and testified before the House Budget Committee on Capitol Hill.
This is the kind of moral fusion organizing that can sway elections and build lasting change. And with coverage on MSNBC, The New York Times, The Hill, ThinkProgress, The Nation, Vox and more, this Campaign is breaking through and we are being heard.
With so much at stake, we must keep the political spotlight on poverty. At the presidential candidates’ forum, we asked each candidate whether they would commit to a presidential debate on the five interlocking injustices. They all said yes. And then today the House Budget Committee acknowledged that poverty is a serious issue in this country. Let’s hold them—and every 2020 presidential candidate—to their word.
What we’ve done over the last three days proves that the poor are not a small, pigeonholed or easily ignored group. We are building the kind of power that, as Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said in 1967, could make the power structures of this country say yes—yes to voting rights, yes to health care, yes to good jobs and living wages, yes to welfare, housing, water and food, yes to peace—when they may be desirous of saying no.
The Poor People’s Moral Action Congress was just the beginning. The Campaign will be returning to D.C. next June for a massive march on Washington and will be holding events all over the country to make sure we confront the unjust structures in our country and build something better in their place.
Forward together, not one step back,
Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II and Reverend Dr. Liz Theoharis, President of Repairers of the Breach & Director of the Kairos Center, Co-Chairs of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival
