COVID-19 has forced the nation into an unprecedented emergency. We know that the roots of this emergency stem from a deeper and much longer-term crisis — that of poverty and inequality, and of a society that has long ignored the needs of 140 million people who are poor or one emergency away from being poor. Furthermore, our for-profit health care system with its financial barriers to access, contributes substantially poverty and inequality.
That’s why ISPC is partnering with the Poor People’s Campaign (PPC) to help mobilize for their Mass Poor People’s Assembly & National Moral March on Washington, DC. Their goal is to conduct the largest online gathering of poor and working people and people of conscience in this nation’s history.
PPC Leaders say, “If the 140 million poor and low-income people (43% of the U.S.)—those without adequate health insurance, without living wages, without clean water, without voting protections—if they unite, we can move the moral and political imagination of this country and revive the heart of our democracy!”
PPC demands include, “…the expansion of Medicaid in every state and single-payer universal health care for all.” See all PPC demands here.
For Illinois, their goal is to get 30,000 people to RSVP.
Schedule:
This 2-hour program will be broadcast live on Saturday, June 20th at 9:00am CDT and again at 5:00pm CDT. A recorded version will be rebroadcast on Sunday, June 21st at 5:00pm CDT. We ask you to plan to participate in one of these events. RSVP Now for June 20, 2020.
Background on the PPC March:
In 1968, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and many others called for a “revolution of values” in America and sought to build a broad movement that could unite poor and dispossessed communities across the country. Today, the Poor People’s Campaign (PPC): A National Call for Moral Revival has picked up this work. People across the nation have joined the Campaign to confront the interlocking evils of systemic racism, poverty, climate change and ecological devastation, militarism and the war economy, and the distorted moral narrative of religious nationalism.
The Poor People's Assembly and Moral March on Washington will be an historic, generationally transformative digital event. Across the internet and the airwaves we will drive the vision and agenda of our communities into the heart of the national narrative.
In this unprecedented moment, we must tell the truth about the dire failures of our political leaders. We must also demonstrate that it is the leadership emerging from poor and dispossessed people that is paving a different way forward.
History teaches us that it is exactly in moments like these that a movement of the many is necessary to force the nation into action.