Crowds of people descended upon downtown Los Angeles on May 16 as part of the Moral Monday March sponsored by the Poor People’s Campaign, a national movement to confront racism, poverty, and other ills destroying communities across America.
Earlier this month, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that California was the first state in the nation to secure Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funding to place unsheltered people in hotel rooms at no cost to them. The state’s action is providing safe isolation for tens of thousands of homeless Californians during the global COVID-19 pandemic.
You might think that the kind of generational poverty that would concern a global powerhouse like the United States of America, let alone the paradise we call Southern California, is a non-conversation in this country. Yet the special rapport on poverty, racial equity, and human rights is an appropriate link. The notion that we have a low unemployment rate, but a high under-employment rate, increased homelessness, immigration, food insecurity, poor education, immigration political wars, and racial inequity, when correctly interpreted, the numbers suggest that we have an urgent problem.
SCLC is planning a new Poor People’s Campaign focused on empowerment, education and food for those in poverty.
Following the Shelby County v. Holder Supreme Court case, which gutted key provisions of the Voting Rights Act, 14 states had new voting restrictions in place before the 2016 Presidential election, and there were 868 fewer polling places across the country, according to the Poor Peoples Campaign.
Prominent American civil rights activist and Washington, D.C. politician Sterling Tucker passed away on July 14, in Washington, D.C. Tucker was the first chair of the District of Columbia City Council and ran for mayor in 1978. He was defeated by Marion Barry by 1,500 votes.
The South Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), a national leader in civil and political rights, held a convention in Atlanta from July 18 to July 20 to scrutinize a topic many Americans are rather uncomfortable discussing — poverty.
Aretha Franklin fans are cheering following the news that the “Amazing Grace” documentary, which chronicles the story behind her Grammy Award-winning double album, will hit movie theaters across the nation on April 5.
Writing to fellow clergy from a Birmingham Jail (The Negro Is Your Brother), Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. – gravely concerned about all who were poor and experiencing inequality – said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
Thirty-two million Americans go without health insurance. Medical bills are the No. 1 cause of bankruptcy. More than half of minimum wage workers must work more than one job to make ends meet. According to the official Supplemental Poverty Measure, 140 million Americans live in poor or low-income households, including 38 million children.
National Museum of African American History and Culture commemorates 50th Anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Final Crusade in “City of Hope” Exhibition