Poor People’s Campaign Hits Trenton as Budget Negotiations Intensify

Advocates Demand Lawmakers Expand Healthcare Coverage to Uninsured, Ban Fracking Waste, Stop Pipeline Expansions, Transition to 100% Renewable Energy  

TRENTON, NJ — For the fourth consecutive week, poor people, clergy and advocates will return to Trenton, as their historic reignition of the Poor People’s Campaign this week demands lawmakers ensure everyone in NJ has the right to healthcare and a healthy environment.

WHO:  Participants in NJ Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival

WHAT:  Protest at Statehouse demanding immediate action to ban toxic fracking waste, stop dirty and dangerous oil and gas pipelines, expand healthcare coverage for uninsured families, and prevent further attempts to privatize local water utilities.

WHERE:  Front Steps of the NJ Statehouse Annex, 131 W. State Street.

WHEN:  Monday, June 4, 2018, 2:00 PM Rally, 3:00 PM Action

In New Jersey, over 70,000 children are without adequate health care, and many adults simply cannot afford rising health care costs.  At the same time, we are seeing a massive expansion of new polluting infrastructure proposed throughout our state which exacerbates our public health needs.

These proposals include several major oil and gas pipelines, a massive new gas fired power plant proposed in the Meadowlands, and regulations that would allow highly toxic fracking waste to be discharged into the Delaware River, endangering the drinking water source for Millions.  And in a state where corporations are taking control of water systems and then hiking rates for their profits, we are seeing drinking water services become increasingly unaffordable for poor people across New Jersey.

Participants in Monday’s nonviolent direct action are expected to carry signs that read, “Health care is a moral issue”, “13.8 million U.S. households cannot afford water”, “Systemic change NOT climate change”.

The action in New Jersey is one of three dozen nationwide.

BACKGROUND:

The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival is co-organized by Repairers of the Breach, a social justice organization founded by the Rev. Barber; the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights and Social Justice at Union Theological Seminary; and hundreds of local and national grassroots groups across the country.

On May 14, campaign co-chairs the Revs. William J. Barber II and Liz Theoharis were among hundreds arrested nationwide in the most expansive wave of nonviolent civil disobedience in U.S. history, kicking off a six-week season of direct action demanding new programs to fight systemic poverty and racism, immediate attention to ecological devastation and measures to curb militarism and the war economy. Last week, they were arrested again, alongside the Rev. Jesse Jackson after staging a pray-in in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol. Hundreds more were arrested at capitols nationwide, including in NJ.

The protests from coast to coast are reigniting the Poor People’s Campaign, the 1968 movement started by Dr. King and so many others to challenge racism, poverty and militarism. The Campaign is expected to be a multi-year effort, but over the first 40 days, poor and disenfranchised people, moral leaders and advocates are engaging in nonviolent direct action, including by mobilizing voters, knocking on tens of thousands of doors, and holding teach-ins, among other activities, as a moral fusion movement comprised of people of all races and religions takes off.

For the past two years, leaders of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival have carried out a listening tour in dozens of states across this nation, meeting with tens of thousands of people from El Paso, Texas to Marks, Mississippi to South Charleston, West Virginia. Led by the Revs. Barber and Theoharis, the campaign has gathered testimonies from hundreds of poor people and listened to their demands for a better society.

A Poor People’s Campaign Moral Agenda, announced last month, was drawn from this listening tour, while an audit of America conducted with allied organizations, including the Institute for Policy Studies and the Urban Institute, showed that, in many ways, we are worse off than we were in 1968.

The Moral Agenda, which is guiding the 40 days of actions, calls for major changes to address systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation, the war economy and our distorted moral narrative, including repeal of the 2017 federal tax law, implementation of federal and state living wage laws, universal single-payer health care, and clean water for all.

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