Page 8 The Skanner Portland & Seattle February 27, 2019
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Poor People’s Campaign to Hold Bus Tours of Poverty Areas
By Martha Waggoner
Associated Press
RALEIGH, N.C. — The
Poor People’s Campaign
will hold bus tours of
poverty-stricken areas
in more than 20 states to
call attention to “what
the national emergen-
cies really are” in the
wake of President Don-
ald Trump’s emergen-
cy declaration over the
U.S.-Mexico border, a
leader of the campaign
says.
The tours will begin in
late March and continue
through April, said the
Rev. William Barber of
North Carolina. Partici-
pants will include poor
people, religious and po-
litical leaders and other
advocates, he said.
The tours were always
planned as part a re-
vived version of the Rev.
Martin Luther King Jr.’s
Poor People’s Campaign
that launched in Decem-
ber 2017 to coincide with
the 50th anniversary
of King’s original cam-
paign, Barber said. But
Trump’s declaration of
a national emergency to
build a wall on the U.S.
border with Mexico add-
ed urgency, he said.
“Part of the problem
that we see in policies of
Democrats vs. Republi-
cans is one talks about
they want the wall and
the other side said they
don’t want the wall,” Bar-
ber said in a phone inter-
view. “But nobody has
sat down and said: ‘Here
are the real emergencies
and here is how these re-
sources could be used to
address these real emer-
gencies.’”
Barber is co-chair of
the Poor People’s Cam-
paign, along with the Rev.
Liz Theoharis of the Kai-
ros Center. The renewed
Poor People’s Campaign
began after Barber led
the “Moral Monday”
movement in North Caro-
lina , which began in 2013
and held protests about
issues including voting
rights,
gerrymander-
ing, LGBTQ rights and
unions.
Instead of spending al-
most $6 billion on a wall,
the country could in-
vest in health care, clean
energy jobs or placing
more children in Head
Start programs, he said.
He and Theoharis an-
nounced details of the
bus tours Monday in
Washington. Theoharis
said the tour is scheduled
to visit almost 30 states
and Washington, D.C. In
California, the tour will
visit the Yurok Indian
reservation, while in
New York state, the tour
will go to Elmira, home to
two maximum security
prisons.
“We know as a nation
we can lift up the load
of poverty,” she said at a
news conference.
Trump issued an emer-
gency declaration so he
could access billions of
dollars beyond what Con-
gress authorized to start
erecting a border wall
that was a trademark
of his presidential cam-
paign.
Congress approved a
vast spending bill earli-
er this month that pro-
vides nearly $1.4 billion
to build 55 miles of bor-
der barriers in Texas’
Rio Grande Valley while
preventing a renewed
government shutdown.
Trump had demanded
$5.7 billion to construct
more than 200 miles.
AP PHOTO/JOSE LUIS MAGANA, FILE
Tours, led by Rev. William Barber, to begin in late March and continue through April
In this June 23, 2018 file photo, Rev. Dr William Barber II accompanied by Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis and Rev.
Jesse Jackson speaks to the crowd outside of the U.S. Capitol during a Poor People’s Campaign rally at The
National Mall in Washington. The Rev. William Barber, a leader of the Poor People’s Campaign says the
social justice movement is planning bus tours of poverty-stricken areas in more than 20 states to refocus
the country on its true emergencies.
In June, the Poor Peo-
ple’s Campaign plans a
People’s Moral Action
Congress in Washington
with more than 2,000
people to discuss the
realities of poverty. In
conjunction with the
meeting, the group will
release a poor people’s
higher ground budget
that focuses on inequal-
ity.
Attendees will call on
Congress to hold a hear-
ing with people hurt
by poverty and racism
regarding what Barber
calls “interlocking injus-
tices” of systemic racism,
poverty, ecological dev-
astation, a war economy
and a distorted moral
narrative.
The U.S. needs to “shut
up and shut down the
foolishness that our
greatest threat is who
comes across our bor-
der rather than that the
greatest problem is rac-
ism and poverty inside
the border,” Barber said.
Follow Martha Waggon-
er on Twitter at http://twit-
ter.com/mjwaggonernc
This story has been up-
dated to correct the name
of the organization where
Theoharis works to Kairos
Center, not Institute.
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