According to Wikipedia, “The Poor People’s Campaign, or Poor People’s March on Washington, was a 1968 effort to gain economic justice for poor people in the United States. It was organized by Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and carried out under the leadership of Ralph Abernathy in the wake of King’s assassination in April 1968. The campaign demanded economic and human rights for poor Americans of diverse backgrounds. After presenting an organized set of demands to Congress and executive agencies, participants set up a 3,000-person protest camp [called Resurrection City] on the Washington Mall [where Martin Luther King gave his I Have a Dream speech in August 1963], where they stayed for six weeks in the spring of 1968. The Poor People’s Campaign was motivated by a desire for economic justice: the idea that all people should have what they need to live. King and the SCLC shifted their focus to these issues after observing that gains in civil rights had not improved the material conditions of life for many African Americans. The Poor People’s Campaign was a multiracial effort—including African Americans, European Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Native Americans—aimed at alleviating poverty regardless of race.
According to political historians such as Barbara Cruikshank, “the poor” did not particularly conceive of themselves as a unified group until [US] President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty (declared in 1964) identified them as such. Figures from the 1960 census, Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Commerce Department, and the Federal Reserve estimated anywhere from 40 to 60 million Americans—or 22 to 33 percent—lived below the poverty line. At the same time, the nature of poverty itself was changing as America’s population increasingly lived in cities, not farms (and could not grow its own food).
By 1968, the War on Poverty seemed like a failure, neglected by a Johnson administration (and Congress) that wanted to focus on the Vietnam War and increasingly saw anti-poverty programs as primarily helping African Americans. The Poor People’s Campaign sought to address poverty through income and housing. The campaign would help the poor by dramatizing their needs, uniting all races under the commonality of hardship and presenting a plan to start to a solution. Under the “economic bill of rights,” the Poor People’s Campaign asked for the federal government to prioritize helping the poor with a $30 billion anti-poverty package that included, among other demands, a commitment to full employment, a guaranteed annual income measure and more low-income housing. The Poor People’s Campaign was part of the second phase of the civil rights movement. [Martin Luther] King said, “We believe the highest patriotism demands the ending of the [Vietnam] war and the opening of a bloodless war to final victory over racism and poverty”.
King wanted to bring poor people to Washington, D.C., forcing politicians to see them and think about their needs: “We ought to come in mule carts, in old trucks, any kind of transportation people can get their hands on. People ought to come to Washington, sit down if necessary in the middle of the street and say, ‘We are here; we are poor; we don’t have any money; you have made us this way … and we’ve come to stay until you do something about it.”
The Poor People’s Campaign had complex origins. King considered bringing poor people to the nation’s capital since at least October 1966, when welfare rights activists held a one-day march on the Mall. In May 1967 during a SCLC retreat in Frogmore, South Carolina, King told his aides that the SCLC would have to raise nonviolence to a new level to pressure Congress into passing an Economic Bill of Rights for the nation’s poor. The SCLC resolved to expand its civil rights struggle to include demands for economic justice and to challenge the Vietnam War. In his concluding address to the conference, King announced a shift from “reform” to “revolution” and stated: “We have moved from the era of civil rights to an era of human rights.”
The March on Washington where Dr. King gave his I Have a Dream speech was August 28, 1963. The SCLC announced the Poor People’s Campaign December 4, 1967. King was murdered exactly four months later on April 4, 1968…
The Wikipedia entry continues, “The [Poor People’s] campaign did produce some changes, however subtle [including] more money for free and reduced lunches for school children and Head Start programs in Mississippi and Alabama. The USDA [US Department of Agriculture] released surplus commodities to the nation’s one-thousand poorest counties, food stamps were expanded, and some federal welfare guidelines were streamlined.”, but, “An economic bill of rights was never passed…”
At the beginning of this year I decided to follow in Dr. King’s footsteps by shifting the focus of the group I head, the 613-819 Black Hub, from race to class. Like Dr. King, the purpose is to demand economic and human rights for low-income Canadians of diverse backgrounds. The 2024 report of the National Advisory Council on Poverty said 3.8 million Canadians, or about ten per cent, were living below the poverty line in 2022, and there’s probably more now.
Also like Dr. King, I made the decision to focus on poverty more than race at a time of great push back against groups demanding equity. In the ‘60s that included all the groups involved in The Poor People’s Campaign – African, European, Asian, Hispanic and Native Americans. In Canada today, groups advocating for equity include African Canadians, Indigenous peoples, people with disabilities, women and members of the LGBTQ2S+ communities.
What’s new today are the factors driving the backlash against equity.
There was no internet in the ‘60s, dominated by a few companies making massive profits from stoking division among people – regardless of whether the division is based on fact or misinformation. Also, in King’s time, men, as a group generally, weren’t struggling as people like Richard Reeves argues they are today. The popularity of conservative online Canadian influencers like Adam Beattie, known online as Robin Skies, indicates many young men relate to his message that the promise of a secure middle-class existence had been undone by Liberal policies aimed primarily at older generations. “[Beattie] has described Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s vision for the country as “f–king glorious”.
Men’s struggles are, of course, made worse by the general economic struggles that have, in recent years, affected more middle class people – like trying to find an affordable home to buy or rent.
Right wing folks like Donald Trump, Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate have been very successful at connecting with men by saying they understand their struggles…and suggesting who’s to blame for them. Tate’s popularity with young men has been documented in articles like Freddie Feltham’s 2024 Guardian piece, “I’m Andrew Tate’s audience and I know why he appeals to young men”. According to Feltham, Tate had young men working for him spreading conspiracy theories about masculinity under threat from women. Jordan Peterson’s video on the “destructive nature of DEI” has thousands of views and almost 77% of his followers are reportedly men. As for Trump, look who stormed the US Capitol…
Those on the left must also convince young men that they understand their pain, then identify the real cause: the exploitation-based economic system and those who run it.
Asking young non-Black men to support our fight against systemic anti-Black racism – when they’re struggling to find work – won’t work. We need to convince them we can relate to their struggles because we’re struggling against the same opponent. And we need to talk about how we can work together to improve all our lives – and the future for our kids.
In doing so, it would be smart to talk about The Poor People’s Campaign – what it accomplished, and what it didn’t – and figure out what it will take – and what we’re willing to do – to succeed. Our lives and our children’s lives literally depend on it.