Moral leaders and organizers will hold a Moral Revival Mass Meeting at St. Gabriel’s Church of God in Milwaukee on Monday, Aug. 28, 7-9 p.m., to address the impacts of systemic racism, poverty, militarism, and ecological devastation in Wisconsin and across the U.S.
The event is a part of a 15-state Moral Revival Mass Meeting and Public Event Tour. It’s being co-led by Repairers of the Breach, the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice, Wisconsin Faith Voices for Justice, Fight for $15, local faith leaders, the poor, other people of conscience. It is also being led by the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, president and Senior Lecturer of Repairers of the Breach and co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival; and the Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, co-director of the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice at Union Theological Seminary and co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival.
The Moral Revival Mass Meeting and Public Event Tour has included stops in Charlotte, North Carolina (Aug. 9), Albuquerque, New Mexico (Aug. 15), and Topeka, Kansas (Aug. 21). Other cities that are planned include Louisville, Kentucky (Aug. 25), Milwaukee, Wisconsin (Aug. 28), Detroit, Michigan (Sept. 5), Birmingham, Alabama (Sept. 12), Los Angeles, California (Sept. 19), Chicago, Illinois (Oct. 12), Binghamton, New York (Oct. 17), Boston, Massachusetts (Oct. 19), El Paso, Texas (Oct. 22), Seattle, Washington (Nov. 6), Jackson, Mississippi (Nov. 13), and the District of Columbia (Dec. 4).
“We must shift the moral narrative in our nation. This movement intentionally addresses systemic racism, poverty, environmental degradation, the war economy, the negative impact on fulfilling the promises of our democracy, and the call of fundamental human rights,” Rev. Dr. Barber said. “As our social fabric is stretched thin by widening income inequality, politicians criminalize the poor, fan the flames of racism and xenophobia to divide the poor, and steal from the poor to give tax breaks to the rich and budget increases to a bloated military. At such a time as this, we need a Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival to help us become the nation we’ve not yet been.”
The call for a Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival has emerged from more than a decade of work by grassroots community and religious leaders, organizations and movements fighting to end systemic racism, poverty, militarism, environmental destruction and related injustices and to build a just, sustainable and participatory society. It draws on the history, vision and unfinished work of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1967/68 Poor People’s Campaign that called for a “revolution of values” in America, inviting people who had been divided to stand together against the “triplets of evil” — systemic racism, poverty, and militarism – to insist that people need not die from poverty in the richest nation to ever exist.
“These are difficult and dangerous days,” said the Rev. Dr. Theoharis. “One in two Americans are poor or low-income. Immigrants, Muslims, homeless people, and youth are under attack. Upwards of 32 million people will lose their health care under Trumpcare. Sixty-five million workers make less than $15/hour and some states are actually lowering their minimum wages. Millions of people are living without clean water and sanitation services. Voting rights are being suppressed and wars are waging across the world and intensifying. These and many other crises mean it is urgent we build a Poor People’s Campaign today.”
The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival is co-organized by Repairers of the Breach, the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice, the Popular Education Project, and over 40 local and national partners.
