Poor People's Campaign & PHL

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Applying Public Health Liberation Theory to the Movement

Public Health Liberation is excited to share recent news about the Poor People's Campaign with our readers. The organization drew an audience of more than 100,000 attendees in Washington, DC on Juneteenth weekend by calling attention to the urgent health, social, and economic needs of the poor and low-income. Its "National Call For Moral Revival" has few precedents in recent US history. In short, it is a big political tent and liberation safe space for those groups who find themselves economically and socially vulnerable and marginalized. It is simultaneously a public health, pro-labor, civil rights, women's rights, pro-LGBTQ+, and immigrant justice movement. Its 14 policy recommendations are comprehensive - increasing the federal minimum wage, tax reform, universal health care, and other measures. All are aimed at the needs of the poor. The Poor People's Campaign takes up the mantle of the anti-poverty movement that Dr. King and other Civil Rights leaders formed a year before Dr. King's assassination in April 1968. After leading a march of striking Memphis sanitation workers, Dr. King was scheduled to lead the Poor People's Campaign in May-June 1968, which proceeded with his widow and others.