Update From the Poor Peoples Campaign on Training and Upcoming Days of Action

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Dear Friend Thank you for joining the Poor Peoples Campaign: a National Call for Moral Revival. We have important information about training for non-violent moral fusion direct action below. This week the campaign unveiled a Declaration of Fundamental Rights and Poor People’s Campaign Moral Agenda that will guide the movement through its upcoming 40 days of nonviolent direct action and beyond. Those 40 days will include nonviolent moral fusion direct action at the Massachusetts State Capitol in Boston. “Fifty years after Rev. Dr. King and the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign declared that silence was betrayal, we are coming together to break the silence and tell the truth about the interlocking evils of systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation, the war economy and our distorted moral narrative,” the Moral Agenda reads. “We declare that if silence was betrayal in 1968, revival is necessary today.” The co-chairs Revs. Dr. William Barber and Dr. Liz Theoharis  also announced the first of the six weeks of action would be centered around child poverty, women in poverty and people with disabilities, launching on Mother’s Day with a mass meeting in Washington, D.C. Subsequent weeks will focus on systemic racism, veterans and the war economy, ecological devastation, inequality, and our nation’s distorted moral narrative. To prepare for the 40 days, organizers will hold simultaneous nonviolent direct-action trainings in 30 states, including Massachusetts, beginning this Saturday, April 14th. These trainings are for all supporters, and are required of those who may be willing to risk arrest in demonstrations of non-violent moral fusion direct action. There is space available at trainings both in Boston, and in Western Mass., this Saturday. There will also be future trainings in both the Boston Area and Western Mass. To register for a training, either on April 14th or later, please click the following links: Register for Boston Area Trainings on April 14, April 21st, and May 5th. Register for Western Massachusetts Trainings on April 14, April  28th, and May 6th. We are entering an exciting time where our willingness to take non-violent moral fusion direct action will change the political conversation in America. Also on this week, poor people, clergy and advocates in nearly 40 states who have been organizing the campaign for several years announced they have attracted additional support from more than 100 national religious, labor and social justice organizations. The groups that are joining a national organizing committee to support the state-based organizing include 350.org, Our Revolution, The Service Employees International Union, the National Council of Churches, the National Welfare Rights Union and the National Day Labor Organizing Network. In advance of the 40 days of action, the Institute for Policy Studies Tuesday released The Souls of Poor Folk, an audit of America 50 years after Dr. King and many others launched the original Poor People’s Campaign to challenge racism, poverty, the war economy, and the nation’s distorted morality. The report, which was presented at the Press Club Tuesday by IPS with support from the Urban Institute, shows that, in many ways, we are worse off than in 1968. Legislative actions and legal decisions have gutted the Voting Rights Act and severely restricted the ability of people of color, women and young people to vote. There are 15 million more people living in poverty and nearly eight times as many inmates in state and federal prisons. “There’s an enduring narrative that if the millions of people in poverty in the U.S. just worked harder, they would be lifted up out of their condition,” said John Cavanagh, director of the Institute for Policy Studies. “But here we’re proving—with data and analysis spanning 50 years—that the problem is both structural barriers for the poor in hiring, housing, policing, and more, as well as a system that prioritizes war and the wealthy over people and the environment they live in. It is unfathomable, for example, that in the wealthiest nation in the world, medical debt is the No. 1 cause of personal bankruptcy filings, and 1.5 million people don’t have access to plumbing.” We Can Change This. Forward Together, Not one Step Back Your Massachusetts Organizing Committees Sent via Action Network, a free online toolset anyone can use to organize. Click here to sign up and get started building an email list and creating online actions today. Action Network is an open platform that empowers individuals and groups to organize for progressive causes. We encourage responsible activism, and do not support using the platform to take unlawful or other improper action. We do not control or endorse the conduct of users and make no representations of any kind about them.