The Poor People’s Campaign
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It is centered on five principles:
- Everybody in, nobody out. Everybody is deserving of our nation’s abundance.
- When you lift from the bottom, everybody rises. Instead of “trickle-down,” we start with the bottom up.
- Prioritize the leadership of the poor, low-income, and most impacted. Those who are on the frontlines of these crises must also be in the lead in identifying their solutions.
- Debts that cannot be paid must be relieved. We demand freedom from servicing the debts we cannot pay.
- We need a moral revolution of values to repair the breach in our land. This platform abides by our deepest moral and Constitutional commitments to justice. Where harm has been done, it must be acknowledged and undone.
We can justifiably be critical of the utopian reformism but we should acknowledge that the unrest and discontent presently pervading the USA is widening and encompassing more and more people and that is a promising sign in itself.
“The war on the poor in this country seeks to blame the poor people for their circumstances,” said Curtis Bradford of San Francisco. “It wanted me to believe that I was the problem,” he said. “I’m still here despite the odds, and I no longer buy into the narrative that poverty is my fault.”
Rev. Barber says there’s no option but to go bold. “The worst mistake we could make now with all of this marching and protesting in the street would be to demand too little,” he said.
Another article promoting the campaign
What these wealthy and privileged didn’t count on, she said, “Is us. Us galvanizing our collectives. Us drawing strength from those who came before us. Us unifying, standing shoulder to shoulder empowering each other. Us loving to get in good trouble. And us being that new and unsettling force who will not stop until we have safe housing for all people and future generations to come.”
When you lift from the bottom, everybody rises. Instead of “trickle-down,” we start with the bottom up.
I think views like this are at the root of the identity politics falacy. If we lift someone up, then someone will necessarily fall down o replace them. If we equalise the chances of getting financial riches under a capitalist system we therefore must by definition equalise the chances of getting financial poverty. In a system based up on competition we can’t all be winners, there needs to be losers. I don’t object to fairness and equality of opportunity, but even if all of the equality legislation in place and proposed was put in place and worked, all it would mean is that instead of having a disproportionate number of BAME people in abject poverty, there would be a fully ethnically proportional mix of people in abject poverty.
I’d rather work to get rid of the cause of abject poverty, capitalism, than attempt to find a fair version of capitalism.
The same argument that used to be used in Northern Ireland applies, if you’re a protestant worker you get to live in a better quality slum than a catholic worker. If your a white worker, you get to live in a better quality slum than a black worker
The poor people campaign is a theological or religious campaign which thinks that poverty is produced by the leaders of a particular government and it is also based on the concept of antiracism, and identity, and it never goes to the real root of the causes of poverty, racism and inequality which is capitalism, they think capitalism can be given a humanist face, or to try to reform an economic system that can not be reformed. It was the same campaign initiated by Martin Luther King based on the concept of human rights which is a just a bourgeoise legal fallacy. Poverty is being a wage slave, and the only way to eliminate wage slavery is by replacing capitalism with a new society
“if you’re a protestant worker you get to live in a better quality slum than a catholic worker. If your a white worker, you get to live in a better quality slum than a black worker”
LBJ said, “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
Economic exploitation takes place at the point of production it does not take place at a church and peoples of all colors of their skin are exploited by the capitalist class
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