'It's a Movement': The Poor People's Campaign Heads into the Future with a Robust Agenda.

• Author: Gunn, Erik
• Position: National organization overview

On May 14, 2018, scores of protesters descended on the grounds of Wisconsin's state capitol in Madison. They were there to highlight the fact that more than half of all U.S. children--nearly 52 percent--live in poor or low-income families. The following week they were back, linking poverty to systemic racism, as reflected in minority voter suppression, Islamophobia, and the subjugation of immigrant and indigenous populations. In the third week, they connected gun violence with militarism and the war economy; some protesters were ticketed when they blocked a nearby street.

Week four focused on health and environmental devastation. Week five was on education, jobs, and a living wage. The sixth and final rally, on June 18, presented an uncompromising diagnosis wrapped in a fiercely passionate prescription. In answer to the disparate struggles they had chronicled over the preceding weeks, the campaign called for forging "A New and Unsettling Force"--poor people, moral leaders, and activists, rising up and building power. Their mission: "Confronting the Distorted Moral Narrative."

The protesters were part of the Wisconsin branch of the national Poor Peoples Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, and what happened over those six weeks in Madison happened across the country. The Poor People's Campaign was launched in late 2017 by the Reverend William Barber II and the Reverend Liz Theoharis, and made its formal national debut with the "Forty Days of Moral Action" in May 2018.

Engaging in nonviolent, public civil disobedience in which more than 2,500 activists were arrested nationwide, the campaign called on the nation to reorder its political and social priorities to favor the poor and marginalized. At the concluding march and rally on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., Barber declared that the six-week campaign events marked the beginning of a "moral uprising across America."

In larger cities, the Poor People's Campaign drew some media attention. In Madison, it was largely ignored, with coverage mainly confined to alternative outlets. Yet for those who took part, it was a momentous occasion.

"I had the honor of being arrested," says Anita Abraham, a Wisconsin Poor People's Campaign leader and a fixture at the Madison events. Abraham grew up in Chicago and has lived in Milwaukee since 2012. Now in her fifties, she has volunteered with MoveOn and organized support for "Dreamers"--undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children with their families. After the Affordable Care Act passed, she and her teenage daughter began going out to public events to encourage people to sign up for the program.

During all those years of working for social justice causes, Abraham says, "it was so mind-boggling to see how everyone was all over the the place but not together." She sees the Poor Peoples Campaign as fostering collaboration among many groups and amplifying their messages. "It's like a dream come true."

Wisconsin is one of more than thirty states where the Poor Peoples Campaign has launched a chapter and seems to be on fertile ground. The state's recent history of retrenched rightwing political muscle has made it a laboratory for policies that enrich corporate power and private wealth, escalating economic inequality and racial segregation. But those same forces have given rise to progressive popular resistance throughout the state, including last fall's ouster of Republican Governor Scott Walker by Democrat Tony Evers.

Now the Wisconsin Poor People's campaign is making a renewed effort to increase its visibility. And like the national campaign, it is focused on the long game, aiming for changes that will...