Organizational Updates from MoH - What We've Been Up To!
We thank all of our supporters as MarchOnHarrisburg continues to organize and fight for democracy across Pennsylvania! Here are 2023 updates from our Disrupt the Corrupt Tour and our four campaigns: Gift Ban, Ranked Choice Voting, Pennsylvania Poor People’s Campaign, and Pennsylvania Action on Climate; a note on why we fight and why your donations are critical to helping us all win.
Our Disrupt the Corrupt Tour visited 27 towns across Pennsylvania from April - June to raise up a nonviolent army of democracy warriors: Pennsylvanians ready to organize and get active to make corruption illegal. The tour educated people about our legalized corruption and the suffering it causes, introduced people to MarchOnHarrisburg, and inspired hope in the fight for democracy. We successfully engaged and organized new people into the ongoing work of MoH, and built new relationships with groups across the state. It was a very moving tour experience. Some personal highlights include:
Speaking at a seminary in Gettysburg, dreaming of a government of, by, and for the people right next to the battlefield where that dream was spoken, and where its fate still remains undecided.
Learning from our friends in Erie that Erie used to be part of New York, and when it joined Pennsylvania centuries ago, it insisted that what is now Article 1, Section 2 be inserted into our PA State Constitution: “All power is inherent in the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority and instituted for their peace, safety and happiness…”
Being with so many fired-up people and groups across the state who are sick and tired of being sick and tired and are ready to fight. Everywhere from a church in Butler to a college student center in Shippensburg to a union hall in Allentown to a library in Pittsburgh to an old pajama factory in Williamsport to a community center in Philadelphia and everywhere else we went across the state, people are ready to build the democracy that we deserve.
The Gift Ban
This session, we are fighting for House Bill 484, the 35th Gift Ban bill introduced in the last 23 years. When we started working on the Gift Ban in 2017, it was a perennially impossible bill being blocked by an entrenched white nationalist committee chair. We were told that it is impossible to convince a corrupt Legislature to pass the Gift Ban and outlaw their own corruption. Through our work, we turned the impossible into the possible, and we passed it out of the House State Government Committee in 2019 and again in 2021. Now, we have made the possible into the inevitable. Entrenched corruption within the Legislature is still fighting us every step of the way, but we are on the road to victory. HB 484 is expected to start moving through its first vote when the House returns in the fall.
ranked choice voting
Our Ranked Choice Voting bills have been introduced in the House (HB 1178) and in the Senate (SB 729), and we have been lobbying State Legislators, County Commissioners, and the Governor. Our policy experts are trained, and we are helping public officials understand how RCV creates more choice and freedom for voters while liberating candidates from the doom loop of toxic and divisive campaigning. We are also doing consistent public presentations and engaging RCV champions through social media.
the poor people’s campaign: a national call for moral revival
We have continued to grow our leadership within the PA Poor Peoples Campaign. MoH members currently serve as a Statewide Tri-Chair, co-chair of the Communications working group, chair of the Faith Leaders working group, and members of the Political Education, Action Logistics, and Faith Leaders working groups. In June, four of us went down to DC for the Moral Action Congress, where we learned, strategized, lobbied Congress, and demonstrated at the Supreme Court.
We are particularly excited about the Faith Leaders team. We are organizing faith leaders across the state (especially in rural areas), our first ever Rabbinic intern begins with us in September, and we have developed amazing relationships with the Kairos Center, the Freedom Church of the Poor, and other institutions that provide movement leadership development for faith leaders.
And please stay tuned for information about a mass Poor Peoples Campaign mobilization in Harrisburg in February and in DC in June.
Pennsylvania action on climate
Pennsylvania Action on Climate has been a disruptive force in 2023, forcing the encounter with the corruption that drives our ecological devastation by disrupting the fundraisers of climate killing politicians. PAC has also conducted nonviolent direct action trainings across PA and organized various activists and groups into direct action.
In September, the Tour de PAC will cycle across the state, visiting communities impacted by ecological devastation and further organizing people into direct action this fall in Harrisburg.
why you should donate
We need to raise money so we can continue the fight for democracy. Our movement continues to rapidly grow, and your donation goes a long way and means a lot.
Please donate, please set up a monthly recurring donation, and please share this blog with anybody who should read it.
why we fight
Here are Michael’s closing words on Why We Fight from the Disrupt the Corrupt event in Media, PA in May. Click on the image below to watch.
