New Jersey Poor People’s Campaign to Demand Lawmakers Address Inequality as Trenton, NJ Protests Enter Fifth Week

Advocates to Engage in Nonviolent Direct Action For Living Wages, Union Rights, Fully-Funded Anti-Poverty Programs

Trenton, NJ—Poor people, clergy and advocates will join together in Trenton Monday, as their historic reignition of the Poor People’s Campaign enters its fifth week with a demand that lawmakers address inequality in NJ.  Advocates will engage in nonviolent direct action/rally, calling for living wages, the right for all workers to join unions, fully funded anti-poverty programs, and free tuition at public colleges, among other reforms.

In NJ, about 8,500 people are homeless. Working at the state minimum wage, it takes 129 hours of work per week to afford a 2-bedroom apartment. Over 1,350,000 workers, 34% of our workforce make under 15 dollars an hour. This results in over 771,000 residents in need of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Participants in Monday’s nonviolent direct action are expected to carry signs that read, “Poverty wages = policy violence” and “We demand LIVING WAGES NOW!”

The action in NJ is one of three dozen nationwide. Over the last four weeks, dozens of participants have been arrested and hundreds have rallied in NJ as part of the most expansive wave of nonviolent direct action in U.S. history.

WHO:                    Poor and disenfranchised people, moral leaders and advocates from New Jersey

WHAT:                  Protest at NJ statehouse demanding immediate action to Engage in Nonviolent Direct Action For Living Wages, Union Rights, Fully-Funded Anti-Poverty Programs

WHERE:               State House Annex Steps, located at 131-137 West State Street, Trenton, NJ

WHEN:                 Monday, June 11, 2018, 2PM Rally

BACKGROUND:

The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival is co-organized by Repairers of the Breach, a social justice organization founded by the Rev. Barber; the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights and Social Justice at Union Theological Seminary; and hundreds of local and national grassroots groups across the country.

On May 14, campaign co-chairs the Revs. William Barber and Liz Theoharis kicked off a six-week season of nonviolent direct action demanding new programs to fight systemic poverty and racism, immediate attention to ecological devastation and measures to curb militarism and the war economy. For four consecutive weeks, protesters have taken to state capitols across the country, with thousands arrested nationwide for engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience. Last week, the Rev. Barber joined protesters in Frankfort, Kentucky, challenging the state’s first-in-the-nation decision to impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients. The protesters made national headlines when authorities denied them entry into the state Capitol. Poor people, clergy and advocates will return to the capitol in Kentucky and capitols across the country Monday.

The protests from coast to coast are reigniting the Poor People’s Campaign, the 1968 movement started by Dr. King and so many others to challenge racism, poverty and militarism. The Campaign is expected to be a multi-year effort, but over the first 40 days, poor and disenfranchised people, moral leaders and advocates are engaging in nonviolent direct action, including by mobilizing voters, knocking on tens of thousands of doors, and holding teach-ins, among other activities, as a moral fusion movement comprised of people of all races and religions takes off.

For the past two years, leaders of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival have carried out a listening tour in dozens of states across this nation, meeting with tens of thousands of people from El Paso, Texas to Marks, Mississippi to South Charleston, West Virginia. Led by the Revs. Barber and Theoharis, the campaign has gathered testimonies from hundreds of poor people and listened to their demands for a better society.

A Poor People’s Campaign Moral Agenda, announced last month, was drawn from this listening tour, while an audit of America conducted with allied organizations, including the Institute for Policy Studies and the Urban Institute, showed that, in many ways, we are worse off than we were in 1968.

The Moral Agenda, which is guiding the 40 days of actions, calls for major changes to address systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation, the war economy and our distorted moral narrative, including repeal of the 2017 federal tax law, implementation of federal and state living wage laws, universal single-payer health care, and clean water for all.

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