“Stay Alive, Stay at Home, Organise” is the motto for the Poor People’s Digital March, which has been organised by Reverend William Barber and is set to take place on 20 June. Tara Pilkington brings you everything you need to know.
Reverend William Barber is calling for people to stay in place, stay alive, and to organise as he prepares for a Mass Poor People’s Assembly and Moral March on Washington online on 20 June 20th.
Here is what you need to know:
- During an interview, Barber said: “These are hard times. And what we’re seeing in America now, a lot of the pain is by choice. It didn’t have to be. It’s not because of the virus, per se. It is because of the pandemic of greed and lies and trickle-down economics that, in this situation, caused us to move in the wrong direction from the beginning.”
- Discussing how COVID-19 has exploited the existing fissures in society, he said: “America had a whole lot of open wounds as it related to systemic racism and poverty, because when you break down those numbers, 61% of African Americans were poor and low-wealth before COVID.”
- He also added: “What we’re saying is this is the moment that you have to stay at home. Don’t you believe these lies these governors are telling us about the time to open back up the society. Stay at home. Stay alive. Organize.”
Discussing the upcoming Digital March, Barber added: “Even before COVID, we were allowing so much inequality, which is why the Poor People’s Campaign started long before COVID.”
He added that the need for this march was due to an attitude which believes that: “As long as we take care of the wealthy and the middle class, other people — everything is fine. And we’ve not done policy from the bottom up, from low-wage and poor folk, from low-wage workers and poor people, from the bottom up.”
Visit PoorPeoplesCampaign.org or June2020.org to find out more.
