June 29 Moral March gathers steam as PC(USA) and others offer continued support
LOUISVILLE — The Poor People’s Campaign held a virtual pep rally this week to encourage the public to head to Washington, D.C., for an in-person Moral March that’s being organized to stimulate voter turnout and push for policies to uplift people who are struggling under the weight of poverty.
“June 29 at 10 a.m. on the corner of Pennsylvania and Third, it’s time for our voices, our faces to be heard” along with “our commitment to building the most massive turnout to the polls that we’ve seen,” said Bishop William J. Barber II, who co-chairs the Poor People’s Campaign with the Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, a Presbyterian minister.
With help from faith leaders, labor groups and other supporters around the country, the Poor People’s Campaign is pushing a 17-point agenda that it hopes candidates running for office will commit to enacting. The demands include abolishing poverty, establishing a minimum wage of at least $15 an hour, guaranteeing workers’ rights, and ending voter suppression. The PPC also is advocating for affordable, adequate housing and an end to the criminalization of homelessness.
“The homeless and the poor are not just faceless statistics,” said the Rev. Dr. Terrlyn L. Curry Avery, who pastors Martin Luther King Jr. Community Presbyterian Church in Springfield, Massachusetts. “They are our neighbors, our fellow human beings. They are individuals who, like us, deserve dignity, compassion and opportunity.”
Curry Avery was part of a long string of speakers who extended enthusiastic invitations to the march and laid out the need for policy reform. She cited several statistics about how hard it is to make ends meet and to keep a roof over one’s head in her home state and appealed to viewers’ sense of morality and justice.
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