The Poor People's Campaign (PPC) was created on December 4, 1967, by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), an organization at the center of the Civil Rights Movement, to address the issues of unemployment, housing shortages for the poor, and the impact of poverty on the lives of millions of Americans. Unlike earlier efforts directed toward helping African Americans gain civil rights and voting rights, SCLC and its leader, The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., now addressed issues that impacted all who were poor regardless of racial background. It was an effort to unite the poor across color lines, and its immediate aim was to secure federal legislation ensuring full employment, promoting the construction of low-income housing, and securing a robust social safety net for all people.
The Poor People's Campaign: A Call for Moral Revival launched on May 14, 2018 is the legacy of Martin Luther King's dying effort to unite the power of the people in advancing the moral arc of justice. The Sierra Club has joined a chorus of progressive organizations at a time where faith in our federal institutions pales in comparison to the faith and power being built in local communities. Our solidarity with this campaign is in line with our commitment to centering equity and justice while at the same time building public demand on our bedrock environmental issues.
The issues of poverty and the environment are inherently interconnected. To provide a local Maryland example that the Sierra Club has long supported, the Curtis Bay neighborhood of Baltimore City is among the most polluted zip codes in the country. It also happens to be one of the poorest. Goldman Environmental Prize winner and Free Your Voice leader Destiny Watford simply states, “The reason that all these polluting industries are built in Curtis Bay is because we’re poor.” Free Your Voice led students and community members to stop the construction of what would have been the nation’s largest trash burning incinerator, saving the community from the devastating environmental and public health problems this plant would have caused.
The goal of the Poor People’s Campaign is to raise up the interconnectedness of issues like poverty and environmental injustice and to unite people across lines of division. The goal of this mass mobilization, taking place over six week from May to June 2018, is to shift the moral narrative on systemic poverty, systemic racism, the war economy, and ecological devastation by centering the interconnected systemic causes of each and the voices of those most directly effected, so that we can build the political capital to institute long-term solutions. Join the Poor People’s Campaign this Monday, June 4th at 2pm at Lawyers Mall in front of the Maryland State House.