Poor People’s Campaign Puts Poverty Eradication Atop U.S. Agenda

WASHINGTON—With the stark theme of “Poverty = Death”, the Poor People’s Campaign is renewing its drive to put poverty eradication atop the U.S. agenda.

In a day-long Moral Poverty Action Congress in D.C. on Juneteenth, a June 20 rally on Capitol Hill, and lobbying lawmakers in between and the day after that, more than 1,000 people—the poor, the near-poor and their supporters—took the message to Congress that ending poverty in the U.S. is not only the morally right thing to do but that it would benefit the nation economically, too.

“The nation will never get itself together if you have permanent poverty,” said campaign co-chair the Rev. William Barber II. “This doesn’t have to be.”

“Economics kills,” he declared. “Jewish scriptures say ‘You must loose the bands of wickedness’ by paying people what they deserve.”

“If politicians know that what they’re doing causes death, then that’s policy murder,” declared one panelist later in the program, Valerie Wilson, director of the Economic Policy Institute’s program on race, ethnicity, and the economy.

The campaign’s longtime goals are the focus of both the conference and the lobbying. They include raising the minimum wage to a living wage, restoring strong and enforceable…