A Few Notes On The Poor Peoples Campaign Of 1968 As Food For
Thought As We Prepare From The Second And Hopefully Final Campaign in 2018
By Seth Garth
Some readers may know that Si Lannon, who usually does film and
art exhibitions reviews in this publication (and book reviews at the American Literary Digest some of which
find their way into this publication by reciprocal agreement), back on June 23rd
of this year had an assignment in Washington, D.C. to write an article on the Cezanne Portraits exhibition at the
National Gallery of Art. On his way to do that assignment, on that Saturday
June 23rd when he exited the Smithsonian Metro stop on National Mall
to walk over to the 7th Street entrance to the Gallery building Si
noticed a large white tent and further down toward 7th Street proper
a large stage flanked by two huge screens and huge banners proclaiming that
this was the site of the Poor People’s Campaign, hereafter PPC. When he stopped
off at the tent he found out from one young activist who was busy painting
slogans on posters for the day’s event that the day was the culmination of several
weeks of local state capital actions throughout the country highlighting issues
like homelessness, immigration and the war economy. All as they adversely
affect the great unacknowledged poor masses in this country who have mainly
been the victims of the growing gap between the rich and poor. The 23rd
was basically a wake-up call to the federal government and an organizing focus
for the PPC cadre who will be working hard over the long haul to achieve some of
the goals of the campaign. That morning and afternoon would be highlighted by a
rally with the inevitable speakers and a march toward the Capitol several blocks
down the Mall.
Once Si knew what was happening and knowing that a fair number of
readers and certainly a fair number of writers at this publication remember the
original ill-fated Poor People’s Campaign from 1968 which was short-circuited by
the murders Doctor Martin Luther King who originally organized the event and Robert
Kennedy who was running for President that year and had endorsed the ideas of
the campaign and had visited the encampment set up in that summer before his
death he called up site manager Greg Green to see if he wanted Si to cover that
event. Greg although about a half generation younger that the average person
who would remember that event jumped on it with both hands. Told Si to not
worry about the Cezanne exhibit and do a piece on the event, Which he did a
good job on and had been posted on this site in late June.
That would not be the end of the PPC coverage though once Si had
done his report. Greg, curious about the original PPC, looked for writers here that
might have some information and insights about what happened, or didn’t happen,
in 1968 and maybe why. As it turned out the only person who had paid much
attention to the event was I. I had actually visited the encampment in the summer
of 1968 before I received that dreaded draft notice from “my friends and
neighbors” which is the way they introduced themselves at the draft board in
Adamsville. I made it clear to Greg that I had not been an activist, a participant
but had been down for a different reason, a non-political reason, which is North
Adamsville corner boy speak back then meant seeing some young woman. Be that as
it may Greg assigned me the piece. I make no great claims about being some kind
of PPC scholar but only offer some observation which may alert the current audience
to what is happening.
[This truly belongs as an aside but I could not resist making the
point that in the amateur political organizing business some things never
change. I refer to Si’s asking what was happening on June 23rd to a
young activist who was painting slogans on poster board. I can remember many a
night, many an after midnight night, high on some drug of the month, working
with a small group of other young activists painting slogans on poster board
for some demonstration or other. That is the same part. What nobody, nobody in their
right minds does today is take said posters or leaflets and using old-fashioned
wallpaper paste put them up on telephone poles and on wall also after midnight
to avoid the coppers, and probably high on the drug of the month then too] Seth
Garth
A Few Notes On The Poor Peoples Campaign Of 1968 As Food For
Thought As We Prepare From The Second And Hopefully Final Campaign in 2018
[As many of you know this is the 50th anniversary
of the original Poor Peoples Campaign of 1968. Over the past several months to
a year various individuals and organizations have organized around many of
those original themes of bringing the poor into some kind of equality in this
society. Over the next several weeks there will be weekly actions here locally
and a mass rally in Washington around specific grievances. Smedley is knee-deep
in the local planning so to give some thoughts about the original campaign is
what our May GM discussion period is about. Since we have a big agenda I have
written some notes so that we can go to the discussion part directly and save
some time. These notes will also be in hard copy at the GM. Al Johnson]
As a long ago philosopher pointed out those who do not remember
history are condemned to relive it. That point is what drives this discussion
about what happened to the first Poor Peoples Campaign in 1968. It does not
pretend to be all-inclusive nor more than one person’s take on those times and
that event.
At the most general level the original PPC was a dramatic defeat
for the struggles of the poor and oppressed of this country. To understand some
of the reasons behind that defeat beyond the murder of the prime mover of the
campaign Doctor King will help us to push forward. In a sense the PPC was
poorly timed since 1968 as many of us older activists know was a hell-bent year
with the Tet offensive finally showing Americans we could not “win” in Vietnam,
the refusal of the sitting president, LBJ, to run again, the two assassinations
of iconic progressive figures in King and Bobby Kennedy who were in their
respective ways driving forces behind the campaign, the turmoil in the streets
here and internationally with the May Days in France and the chaos and horror
of the Democratic Convention in the summer of that year. So the PPC had to
fight for breathe against those more dramatic events and got pushed to the side
rather easily especially after King’s murder and some inner turmoil and
in-fighting among the leadership.
The PPC was ill-timed and ill-starred in another way. Frankly the
heroic black civil rights struggle down South which brought about massive
increases in voting rights and some other positive benefits did not after 1965
put much of a dent in the oppression of black people and other minorities
around housing, jobs, education, healthcare and the like. With the Vietnam War
sucking the life out of Lyndon Johnson’s modern day version of “forty acres and
a mule” the war on poverty at a governmental level fell apart. Liberals,
governmental and private citizens, began the long retreat away from
governmental attempts to alleviate poverty which continues to this day witness
the demise of the social welfare programs started under the Clinton
administration. Moreover a reaction set in around the question of race when the
cities started burning up as a result of the denial of legitimate grievances by
the black community and its allies in other minority communities.
The elephant in the room though and fifty years of myth creation
around the hallowed name of Doctor King cannot cover the fact up that he as a
leader of the black community had lost some authority by pre-Vietnam speech
1967, has been upended by more militant blacks from various vocal
anti-integrationist black nationalists to the upfront romantic if doomed Black
Panthers. Think about the evolution of the previously intergrated SNCC once
black power became a widespread slogan, especially among the young non-churched
types. King was the number one symbol of black integration when the moods in
the black community was heading elsewhere. Those of us in the military in those
days got a taste of that in off-hours when there was very little interaction
between the races. King through his belated and now famous anti-Vietnam War
speech and his support of the sanitation workers in Memphis was making
something of a “comeback” and the PPC was to be at least the symbolic way to
get his agenda back on the front pages.
This political, social and personal backdrop does not take away
from what was attempted, and what was necessary given the other factors
particularly the retreat by the liberals from advocacy of many social programs
and the hostility of others to even dealing with the poverty problem any
longer. A look at the PPC program tells us that much. It also highlights not
only the social reality of the times but that like the heroic struggle for
formal civils rights the poor and oppressed were going to have to fight for the
better housing, healthcare, education and the like since few others were
committed to their cause. The need for the poor and oppressed to lead and fight
for what they need which never really happened in 1968 and is the wave of the
future of the current campaigns really is the only long-term way forward in
order to break the cycle of poverty and the pathologies that gut-level struggle
for survival engenders. Something which grouping up in the projects I was
personally painfully aware of as a kid.
A few nuts and bolts facts about the 1968 PPC will show that many
of the same issues still need addressing, some of the same organizing tactics
are in play as well from multiracial, multicultural meetings of poor people and
their advocates which the ruling class in its constant strategy of “divide and
conquer” hates to see to some programmatic demands. In March of 1968 many
poverty-centered organizations like the National Welfare Rights Organization
and the Southern Regional Council joined with Doctor King’s organization, the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference, in Atlantic to forge a common program
to fight on. To list the three major demands today seems utopian (and way
underestimating the money that would be needed today) but still necessary to
fight around:
·
$30 billion annual appropriation for a real war
on poverty
·
Congressional passage of full employment and
guaranteed income legislation [a guaranteed annual wage]
·
Construction of 500,000 low-cost housing units
per year until slums were eliminated
To highlight these demands the campaign would be divided into
three phases, the first to create a permitted shanty town of several thousand
people which came to be called Resurrection City on the National Mall, the
second to begin protest demonstrations and mass non-violent civil disobedience
actions and third to take actions to generate mass arrests like those which
brought national attention to the plight of blacks in the South around voting
rights. The latter two phases are the touchstone of the 2018 campaign as well.
To bring people to Washington several “caravans” were organized
from all regions of the country to meet in June of 1968 with a big solidarity
rally which brought some 50, 000 people to D.C. to join the estimated 3000 that
were “residing” on the Mall.
Bayard Rustin put forth a proposal for an “Economic Bill of
Rights” for Solidarity Day that called for the federal government to most of
which still are the wave of the future:
Recommit to the Full Employment Act of 1946 and legislate the
immediate creation of at least one million socially useful career jobs in
public service, adopt the pending housing and urban development act of 1968,
repeal the 90th Congress’s punitive welfare restrictions in the 1967 Social
Security Act, extend to all farm workers the right–guaranteed under the
National Labor Relations Act–to organize agricultural labor unions, and restore
budget cuts for bilingual education, Head Start, summer jobs, Economic
Opportunity Act, Elementary and Secondary Education Acts
I have addressed some of the problems and social conditions which
helped undermine that first campaign and others can add more from their
recollections of the times including the question of post-King murder
leadership and in-fighting. Hopefully the latter will not be an issue in the
new movement.
There are some differences in the current campaign from that of
1968 that I think are worth noting as we gear up the campaign. First, if we are
to be successful this time, real poor people and members of oppressed
communities will have to take leadership roles, make their mistakes and learn
from them. Just like we did, do. Our role is one of support to see that such
leadership emerges which I believe was a real short-coming of the
“professional” organizer from Doctor King on down model in 1968. Second we are
“demanding” similar programs to those of 1968 but not “begging” the government to
implement as some criticized the 1968 campaign for doing. Lastly, and
unfortunately, there are several more issues that the 1968 campaign did not
have to address as forcefully like an end to mass black and Latino
incarceration and the war on drugs which has decimated communities of color and
sapped it of a young, mostly male, leadership component.
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