To the Editor:

For the past five weeks, I’ve participated in the NJ Poor People’s Campaign. Every Monday afternoon, I’ve marched through downtown Trenton with a group of fellow citizens demanding government policies that will ensure a decent life for all Americans. By necessity, our list of demands is broad, including a living wage, clean air and water, and adequate healthcare for everyone. Our march takes us to the Statehouse Annex at 2 p.m., where we listen to the stories of people personally affected by the problems we’re targeting, such as a Newark mother whose family suffers medical problems resulting from polluted air and water. After the speeches, volunteer protesters engage in acts of nonviolent civil disobedience (such as lining up in the street, blocking traffic), resulting in arrest.

That’s only what’s happening in New Jersey. Simultaneously, at statehouses in about 35 states across the country, protesters are being arrested at parallel demonstrations.

But when I mention the Poor People’s Campaign to friends in Princeton, most have not heard about it.

When Martin Luther King was assassinated, he was
organizing the Poor People’s Campaign of 1968. This movement is often remembered through images of Resurrection City, a temporary tent community of the poor, erected on the Washington Mall for about six weeks in May and June of that year. Sadly, the movement lost momentum after King’s assassination.

Now it is being revived as the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. The co-chair, Rev. Dr. William Barber, became prominent when, as head of the North Carolina NAACP, he organized “Moral Mondays,” a series of weekly protests and acts of nonviolent civil disobedience aimed at opposing voter suppression and gerrymandering. After leaving the NAACP, Rev. Barber founded a social justice organization called Repairers of the Breach. Now, in collaboration with Rev. Liz Theoharis, founder of the Kairos Center for Religion, Rights, and Social Justice (at Union Theological Seminary), Dr. Barber is reviving the Poor People’s Campaign. The first phase of the new Poor People’s Campaign is almost complete. The final Monday rally will take place at 2 p.m. on Monday, June 18, on the plaza of the State House Annex, 131 W. State Street in Trenton. I urge those who can do so to show your support for poor people by joining us on the plaza. At this time, especially, it’s vital to demonstrate, by your presence that the status quo is not acceptable.

For more about the NJ Poor People’s Campaign,

see the facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/NewJerseyPPC/.

Kathy O’Leary Wilcox

Old Georgetown Road