National study shows poor, low-income voters strategic in 25 states
Release of a groundbreaking study, by a researcher at Columbia University, that shows the power of poor and low-income people to change the political calculus of this nation. This report shows that if and when the issues of poor and low-income people are represented in political agendas, and those people are engaged in the political and electoral process, there is profound potential to redefine this country’s political maps.
WHO: The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, co-chaired by Rev. Dr. William Barber of Repairers of the Breach and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis of the Kairos Center. Also, the campaign’s policy director, Shailly Gupta Barnes; the author of the report, Rob Hartley; and newly-engaged voters.
WHEN: 1 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday, Aug. 11.
WHERE: Media can register here.
WHY: The Poor People’s Campaign is non-partisan and does not endorse any political candidates. The campaign organizes around a moral policy agenda that is based on the needs and demands of poor and low-income people.
This is not a question of Democrat or Republican, left or right, but a question of why the issues of poor and low-income people are not represented in these agendas and how this campaign and others are organizing and building power among the poor to ensure that they are. This report shows that an agenda that speaks to the issues of the poor and low-income – issues that now are the issues of everyone in this country – may change what we think we know about this country and its political fault lines.
More than 140 million poor and low-income people live in the United States or 43 percent of the country’s population, and that was before the COVID-19 pandemic. The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, with organizing committees in 45 states, is building a moral fusion movement to address the five interlocking injustices of systemic racism, systemic poverty, ecological devastation, the war economy and militarism and a distorted moral narrative of religious nationalism. Our demands are reflected in our Jubilee Platform.
