Poor People’s Campaign Headed From Nebraska to Washington D.C. on June 18
Image credit: Poor People’s Campaign
By Angela Montalvo
Angela Montalvo is a community organizer with Repairers of the Breach and the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. She is a United States Army veteran.
“The Nebraska Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival” is just one piece of a movement spanning nearly every state in the country. Building on the spirit and unfinished work of the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign led by Martin Luther King, Jr., the Poor People’s Campaign seeks to confront the interlocking injustices of systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation, denial of healthcare, militarism and the war economy, and the distorted moral narrative of religious nationalism. In Nebraska, we hope to unite the poor and impacted people across the state from the rural west to North Omaha. We are in 37 states from the hollers of Appalachia to the Mountain West. We are uniting around an ambitious moral agenda and crying out that “We can’t and we won’t be silent anymore.”
Rev. Victoria Parker-Mothershed speaks at a rally on July 26, 2021 outside U.S. Senator Ben Sasse's Omaha office. Photo courtesy of Angela Montalvo
Before COVID-19, there were over 140 million people in the country who were poor or one emergency away from poverty. Between eight and eleven million people were on the brink of homelessness, 87 million people were uninsured or underinsured, half of the children in the U.S. — 39 million— were poor or low income, and one in three Americans were at risk of not being able to afford water in the next five years. Since March 2020 one million people have died of COVID-19. Those deaths happened at disproportionately higher rates in low-income counties across the country. Millions of people are on the edge of hunger and eviction, and still without healthcare, yet billionaire wealth has grown by over $2 trillion. In Nebraska, over 642,000 people are poor or low-income— 34% of the state’s residents— and over 2,000 people are homeless. Forty-eight percent of people imprisoned in Nebraska are people of color. Somebody’s been hurting our people and it’s gone on for far too long.
On June 18 the Poor People’s Campaign is holding the “Mass Poor People’s & Low-Wage Workers’ Assembly and Moral March on Washington and to the Polls.” This will not just be a day but a generationally transformative event to declare our ongoing commitment to:
1) Build power
2) Shift the moral and political narrative
3) Make real policies to fully address poverty and low wealth from the bottom up
Now and after June 18 we are committed to unity and change in the state of Nebraska. Our tri-chairs, myself, Rev. Lisa Hadler, and Lanae Hall live in greater western Nebraska while our state campaign’s fiscal sponsor is Black Votes Matter Institute of Community Engagement in North Omaha. Working with Preston Love, Jr. and our coordinating committee members in Omaha including Rev. Carolyn Grice, we will bring an end to the policies creating the interlocking injustices across the state, and across the country.
June 18 is for everyone committed to ending poverty in the United States. There are still a few seats available in the Nebraska delegation for the march.
Email nebraska@poorpeoplescampaign.org as soon as possible if you are an impacted person interested in joining the march in Washington, or if you would like to join the coordinating committee.
