AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY: Massachusetts Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival Media Advisory for: May 28-29, 2018

Saturday, May 26, 2018

Massachusetts Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival Media Advisory for: May 28-29, 2018

Massachusetts Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival

Media Advisory for: May 28-29, 2018

Poor People’s Campaign to Challenge War Economy, Militarism, Gun Violence

as Protests at Massachusetts State House

Enter Third Week

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Nonviolent Direct Action Planned in Boston Part of Wave of Protests to Hit 35 States, Washington, D.C.

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Poor People, Veterans, Clergy, War Victims to Demand Reduction in Military Spending, Strengthening of Veterans Affairs System, End to Overseas Interventions, Ban on Assault Weapons, and Demilitarization of Local Communities

Boston, MA - For the third consecutive week, poor people, veterans, clergy and advocates will return to the Boston Common and Massachusetts State House on Memorial Day and the following day, as their historic reignition of the Poor People’s Campaign turns the focus of its protests to one of the 1968 movement’s main themes: militarism.

Monday and Tuesday’s protests will come days after President Trump cancelled peace talks with North Korea, bragging about the United States’ “massive and powerful” nuclear capabilities; violated the Iran nuclear agreement; and opened a U.S. embassy in Jerusalem even as Israeli forces were slaughtering mostly peaceful Palestinian protesters in Gaza. It will highlight how our government prioritizes the war economy over programs to eradicate poverty and help veterans. Participants in Tuesday’s nonviolent direct action are expected to carry signs that read, “Money for Veterans, not for War,” and “Build Schools, Not Walls.”

“As a Vietnam combat veteran, I feel I have no choice but to use every means I have to convey to our country what the true cost of war is,” said Dan Luker, coordinator of the War Economy task force of the Massachusetts Poor People’s Campaign. “I feel the need to shout that it is our poor brothers and sister that pay the lifetime costs of being in combat, that it is the poor in this country that pay with their well-being the costs of war. To quote the most decorated soldier in the history of the United States, General Smedley D. Butler, awarded 2 Medals of Honor: ‘War is a racket, a few profit -- the many pay’.”

Participants will call for a reallocation of budgetary dollars to veterans, healthcare, schools, public housing and other social programs in need of funding, among other demands. Under the current federal budget, 53 cents of every federal discretionary dollar goes to military spending and only 15 cents is spent on anti-poverty programs. Monday and Tuesday’s protests will highlight how this disproportionate allocation of resources benefits military contractors that profit from war at the expense of our troops.

In 2015, the Department of Defense budgeted more money on federal contracts, $274 billion, than all other federal agencies combined. In 2016, CEOs of the top five military contractors earned on average $19.2 million each — more than 90 times the $214,000 earned by a U.S. general with 20 years of experience and 640 times the $30,000 earned by Army privates in combat.

In his landmark speech on militarism at Riverside Church in 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., one of the leaders of the original Poor People’s Campaign said: “If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.”

The action in Boston is one of three dozen nationwide, including a major protest planned at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. that will feature Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival co-chair, the Rev. Liz Theoharis. Her campaign co-chair, the Rev. William Barber II, will join protestors in Raleigh, NC, where he started the Moral Mondays Movement.

With 101 mass shootings in the U.S. so far in 2018, activists will also draw the connection between the war economy and the mass proliferation of guns on our streets. They will demand a ban on assault rifles and a ban on the easy access to firearms. And they’ll call for the demilitarization of our borders, including an end to calls to build a war on the U.S.-Mexico Border. They’ll also call for an immigration system that, instead of criminalizing people for trying to raise their families, prioritizes family reunification, keeps families together and allows us all to build thriving communities in the country we call home.

VETERANS’ ENCAMPMENT

WHO: Veterans and people from countries and communities impacted by US militarism

calling for an end to the war economy, militarism, and gun violence

WHAT: Veterans’ Encampment, Rally and Teach-In

WHERE: Boston Common near Park Street

WHEN: Monday, May 28, 1pm-6pm

RALLY

WHO: Participants in Massachusetts Poor People’s Campaign:

A National Call for Moral Revival

WHAT: Protest at Massachusetts State House demanding immediate action to challenge

the war economy, militarism, and gun violence

WHERE: William Gould Shaw/ 54^th Regiment Monument, steps leading down into Boston

Common from Beacon Street, directly across from the State House

WHEN: Tuesday, May 29 at 2PM

BACKGROUND:

The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival is co-organized by Repairers of the Breach, a social justice organization founded by the Rev. Barber; the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights and Social Justice at Union Theological Seminary; and hundreds of local and national grassroots groups across the country.

On May 14, campaign co-chairs the Revs. William J. Barber II and Liz Theoharis were among hundreds arrested nationwide in the most expansive wave of nonviolent civil disobedience in U.S. history, kicking off a six-week season of direct action demanding new programs to fight systemic poverty and racism, immediate attention to ecological devastation and measures to curb militarism and the war economy. Last week, they were arrested again, alongside the Rev. Jesse Jackson after staging a pray-in in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol. Hundreds more were arrested at capitols nationwide, including in STATE.

The protests from coast to coast are reigniting the Poor People’s Campaign, the 1968 movement started by Dr. King and so many others to challenge racism, poverty and militarism. The Campaign is expected to be a multi-year effort, but over the first 40 days, poor and disenfranchised people, moral leaders and advocates are engaging in nonviolent direct action, including by mobilizing voters, knocking on tens of thousands of doors, and holding teach-ins, among other activities, as a moral fusion movement comprised of people of all races and religions takes off.

For the past two years, leaders of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival have carried out a listening tour in dozens of states across this nation, meeting with tens of thousands of people from El Paso, Texas to Marks, Mississippi to South Charleston, West Virginia. Led by the Revs. Barber and Theoharis, the campaign has gathered testimonies from hundreds of poor people and listened to their demands for a better society.

A Poor People’s Campaign Moral Agenda, announced last month, was drawn from this listening tour, while an audit of America conducted with allied organizations, including the Institute for Policy Studies and the Urban Institute, showed that, in many ways, we are worse off than we were in 1968.

The Moral Agenda, which is guiding the 40 days of actions, calls for major changes to address systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation, the war economy and our distorted moral narrative, including repeal of the 2017 federal tax law, implementation of federal and state living wage laws, universal single-payer health care, and clean water for all.

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Savina Martin

Massachusetts Statewide Coordinating Chair (Eastern Region)

Cell: (339) 216.7181

Email: massachusetts@poorpeoplescampagin.org

https://poorpeoplescampaign.org/

Michaelann Bewsee

Massachusetts Statewide Coordinating Chair (Western Region)

Arise for Social Justice, Springfield, MA

Khalil Saddiq, Legal Liaison

Massachusetts Statewide Coordinating Chair (Eastern Region)

"Forward Together NOT one step back!"