Union Theological Seminary

The Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival

2018

$200,000

In the last year of his life, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. organized a faith-rooted, multi-racial movement for economic justice called the Poor People’s Campaign, an effort cut short with his assassination. Fifty years later, the wealth gap in our country has only widened. Our vast economic disparity moved Rev. Dr. William Barber II and Rev. Liz Theoharis to reimagine a Poor People’s Campaign for our time. Following two years of planning, The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival orchestrated 40 days of nonviolent action across the U.S. this spring. Leaders from RPF grantees including the Religious Action Committee, Bend the Arc, Auburn Seminary and more supported the effort by participating in actions and organizing their networks, too. Moving forward, this three-year campaign will work at the state level, training hundreds of organizers, producing and distributing public policy analysis, and giving a platform to the poor in 25 key states. This targeted work to unite low-income Americans and frame economic reform as a moral issue is designed, as Barber puts it, “not to commemorate Dr. King’s journey, but to complete it.”