Why does the United States have so many poor people? The short answer is that the poor exist because the wealthy exist and hoard their wealth. Our society is founded upon and organized through dispossession. It is founded at the most basic level upon the dispossession of land we live upon from its original inhabitants, the many indigenous nations across the continent. The original wealth of this country was built up from the forced and unpaid labor of kidnapped Africans and their enslaved descendants. And, today, it is sustained by the division of the people into two classes: the many who work to create the wealth, and the few who do little to no work, yet accumulate the wealth.

The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival is a nationwide movement founded on the idea that this country is in the grips of a distorted moral narrative. This narrative, propagated by politicians, media, think tanks, and religious figures, tells us that any person’s misfortune is their own fault, while wealth and success are universally the product of hard work. Poverty and wealth are nothing but the logical outcome of a lifetime of individual decisions. The poor should be blamed for their lot, and the wealthy praised for theirs. The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival rejects this narrative.

Poverty: A Mass Issue

In 2018, the Institute for Policy Studies released a report, The Souls of Poor Folk, which revealed that 140 million people in the United States are poor or low income. Of these, 41 million live below the federal poverty line. While women and historically oppressed racial and ethnic groups are hit especially hard by poverty, the poor as a group bridge across gender, racial, generational, and other demographic lines. The masses of impoverished and dispossessed people in our country are, in fact, one of its defining features.

Despite producing more wealth than ever over the past few decades, those in our country who work are increasingly poor. Housing, medicine, and food are created and sold for the sake of profit, leaving empty houses, medicine, and food in the trash while people starve and die of curable diseases in the street. At the same time, employers look for every opportunity to reduce the cost of labor, leading to lower wages and fewer jobs. Increasingly, jobs that once required a human being are now being done by machines. According to a study by the Brookings Institution, more than half of all jobs in the following sectors like food preparation and service, production operations, office/administrative support, and others, can be automated in principle. The World Economic Forum estimates that 30% of all jobs will be automated by 2030 alone. Not all of these jobs are replaced, and the result of greater competition for existing jobs spirals wages down. Housing, medicine, and food, which are only for sale on the market, become unavailable. This is how poverty kills at least 250,000 people in the United States every year, pre-pandemic.

A Failure to Meet Basic Needs

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a humanitarian disaster, and it has hit the United States particularly hard. More than nearly any other country, the US is dedicated to this principle: the basic necessities of life are products that are created and sold for the sake of profit. The provision of basic needs for all, because they are basic needs, is contrary to this way of doing things. Even during this pandemic, neither major Presidential candidate would commit to guaranteeing the provision of healthcare for everyone in the United States.

North Country PPC leaders participating in a virtual day of action around issues of healthcare and housing. (Photo: North Country PPC)

Poverty is a natural consequence of the way our society produces and distributes life necessities. That is what the Poor People’s Campaign means when we say that poverty is systemic. Ending poverty does not require us to elect the correct candidate to office. Nor does it mean that at some point, the wrong legislation was passed, and must be repealed, or that we are just waiting for the right bill to make its way to Congress. Poverty exists because our society is designed to produce and expand poverty, and to keep people from getting out of poverty.

A system that produces deep poverty side-by-side with vast wealth is an unstable society. The ranks of the poor grow at the same time that large amounts of goods, including basic necessities, remain unsold. “Downturns”, crises, recessions, and depressions mean that people can no longer meet their needs. Those who enjoy relative comfort and privilege one moment may find it slipping away the next, and are part of the 140 million poor and low-wealth Americans. For many, blame doesn’t fall upon the system, but falls on Black, Latinx, Native people, immigrants, LGBTQ people, and others who are marginalized in society. Hard times inflame and radicalize bigotry. The Poor People’s Campaign challenges this distorted moral narrative.

Responding to Trumpism

Since 2015, Donald Trump was able to capitalize on racist, sexist, anti-immigrant, xenophobic, anti-LGBTQ, and other bigoted sentiments. Trump falsely presented himself as an enemy of the “establishment”. As a billionaire, Trump is as much a part of the “establishment” as anyone could be. Yet he stood out from career politicians to many because he was willing to say something that, while clear as day, few were willing to say: something is very wrong. His diagnosis of the problem was as wrong as it was repugnant, but in the absence of a genuine and truthful voice, his message resonated with millions of people.

A movement of and led by the poor and dispossessed, like the Poor People’s Campaign, is the antidote to Trumpism. The unity of the poor is anathema to the Trump movement, which seizes upon divisions between the relatively privileged and the marginalized. But when the poor are united, we have the power to change society. The poor are those who create the vast wealth of society, and when we are united we are able to bring the system to a halt. We simply stop working. That is the most powerful political weapon that exists, and it is how we can change society. We can remake society under a new and better system organized around meeting people’s needs rather than creating ever greater profits for the very few.

“Back to Normal” Is Not Acceptable

On January 20, 2021, Joe Biden was inaugurated President of the United States of America after four years of surreal performance by President Donald Trump. Throughout the country’s liberal Democratic quarters, a collective sigh of relief is echoing through the halls. Partisan newspapers paint the picture of a new dawn for the United States, and many hold on to the hope that things will return “back to normal,” that is, back to the way that things were before Trump took office.

The North Country Poor People’s Campaign affirms that we cannot, under any circumstances, go back to the “normal” that Joe Biden’s presidency represents. The “normal” that preceded Trump is a system that produces poverty and withholds the necessities of life from large numbers of people. It is a system that furthers racism, sexism, anti-LGBTQ and other forms of bigotry. We will fight throughout the next 4 or 8 years to pursue our demands, which you can read about at poorpeoplescampaign.org/about/our-demands.

Regardless of who is President, we live in a system where wealth is produced by the many and accrues to the few. As long as this is true, the Poor People’s Campaign will fight for unity and power for the poor and dispossessed. We know that in order to meet the needs of the poor, we’ve got to have an organization like the Poor People’s Campaign. As Willie Baptist of the National Union of the Homeless said, “You only get what you’re organized to take.”

The North Country Poor People’s Campaign meets virtually on the third Tuesday of each month at 6pm. Learn more and join our email list at nysppc.org! You can also like and follow the NYS Poor People’s Campaign at @NYSPPC on Facebook and Instagram, or join our North Country Poor People’s Campaign Facebook group at facebook.com/groups/northcountryppc.

You can not talk sense to the ruling class capitalists because they are ALREADY SENSIBLE.

They are sensible about their CLASS INTERESTS. Their class interests are the exact opposite of yours.

Them sabotaging any "revolution" IS them being "sensible".

They are NOT confused.

They are NOT misunderstanding you.

They are NOT misinformed about socialism.

THEY ARE YOUR CLASS ENEMIES.

They are RATIONAL ACTORS defending their own class interests. So should you.

They will not change because it's the "right thing to do".

They will not be shamed into changing.

They will not listen to appeals to emotion or empathy.

They will always look out for their own class interests.