MarchOnHarrisburg is proud to be part of the Coordinating Committee of the Pennsylvania Poor People's Campaign: A National Call For Moral Revival, which is working the end the inseparable evils of racism, poverty, the war economy and ecological devastation.
The campaign is state-based, with national leadership from Rev. Barber with the Repairers of the Breach and Rev. Theoharis, with the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights and Social Justice at Union Theological Seminary.
The campaign is building a broad and deep national moral movement – rooted in the leadership of poor people and reflecting the great moral teachings – to unite our country from the bottom up. Coordination teams have formed in 39 states and Washington, D.C. to challenge extremism locally and at the federal level and to demand a moral agenda for the common good.
The campaign draws on the unfinished work of the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign, reigniting the effort led by civil rights organizations, labor and tenant unions, farm workers, Native American elders, welfare rights and other grassroots organizers to foster a moral revolution of values. Despite real political wins in 1968 and beyond, the original Poor People’s Campaign was tragically cut short, both by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination and by the subversion of the coalition that sustained it. Still, the original vision and many of its followers did not go away. Fifty year later, the revival of the campaign is picking up where Martin Luther King Jr. left off.
From May 14-June 23, nearly more than 5,000 people presented themselves as moral witnesses during the launch phase of the campaign.
In Pennsylvania, more than 1,500 people from 30 counties rallied at the State Capitol Building and nearly 100 moral witnesses were arrested through nonviolent civil disobedience. The coalition in Pennsylvania is organized by a Coordination Team with leaders from organizations of poor and dispossessed people in nearly every region of the state.
