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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 emergencies really are” in the wake of President Donald Trump’s emergency 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. Participants will include poor people, religious and political leaders and other advocates, he said.
The tours were always planned as part a revived version of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Poor People’s Campaign that launched in December 2017 to coincide with the 50th anniversary of King’s original campaign, Barber said. But President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national emergency to build a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico added urgency, he said.
“Part of the problem that we see in policies of Democrats vs. Republicans is one talks about they want the wall and the other side said they don’t want the wall,” Barber said in a phone interview. “But nobody has sat down and said: ‘Here are the real emergencies and here is how these resources could be used to address these real emergencies.’”
Barber is co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, along with the Rev. Liz Theoharis of the Kairos Institute. The renewed Poor People’s Campaign began after Barber led the “Moral Monday” movement in North Carolina , which began in 2013 and held protests about issues including voting rights, gerrymandering, LGBTQ rights and unions.
Instead of spending almost $6 billion on a wall, the country could invest in health care, clean energy jobs or placing more children in Head Start programs, he said.