If you were to hold up a collective mirror to us, you would see a nation in which there were 87 million uninsured or underinsured people and 39 million workers who made less than a living wage before the pandemic struck. You would see a government that refused to either expand health care (even during the worst public-health crisis in generations) or raise wages for the very workers who can't afford the essentials of life. You're talking about a country in which, again before the pandemic arrived, 14 million families couldn't afford to pay their water bills and more than half of our children lived in food-insecure homes. Is it any wonder that so many poor and low-income people suffered and died with the arrival of the virus?
Sacrifice Zones of the Poor
That toll from Covid-19 is, however, only one way to understand the recent impact of policy choices related to the poor. It was all too symbolically on target that immediately after releasing the Poor People's Pandemic Report, the Poor People's Campaign kicked off a Moral March on West Virginia that was to go from Harper's Ferry to one of Democratic Senator Joe Manchin's congressional offices in Martinsburg. Poor moms, former coal miners, labor organizers, and climate activists from West Virginia hiked 23 miles to call on "their" senator to begin actually addressing the needs of his constituents - to expand voting rights, raise the minimum wage to a living one, extend the Child Tax Credit, protect this planet, and invest in education, health care, and programs of social uplift.
In reality, by blocking the passage of even a watered-down Build Back Better bill in Congress, Manchin refused to legislate in the interest of the majority of his constituents, especially the 710,000 poor and low-income West Virginians. He has similarly blocked bills to restore and expand voting rights protections through the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.
Meanwhile, by refusing to vote to end the filibuster in the Senate or enact a fairer taxation system, Manchin continues to ensure that policies benefiting millions of Americans and the planet writ large will once again be left at the side of the road. He's repeatedly chosen to side with the greed of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the largest lobbying group in the country, and the fossil-fuel industry against the needs of the people. And such stances have been disastrous. Figures compiled by the Institute for Policy Studies last year showed that in West Virginia, the $3.5 trillion version of the Build Back Better bill would have created 17,290 new jobs, benefited 346,000 children by extending the expanded child tax credit, and allowed an additional 88,050 West Virginians to take paid leave each year.
To make matters worse, in the northern panhandle of West Virginia, there's the Rockwool Ranson Plant, an insulation manufacturing factory set up in a poor community. Our Moral March made its way through Ranson. While there, we heard about a mother whose children go to a school just blocks from the plant, which is within two miles of four public schools that house 30% of the county's student population (as well as several daycare centers). Scientists tested the blood levels of kids at North Jefferson Elementary School before the plant opened in 2021. Just a year later, there were already higher rates of asthma and toxins in their blood. Indeed, the very placement of that plant goes against the recommendations of the Environmental Protection Agency and the World Health Organization (WHO), both of which assert that heavy industry should not be located near schools. (WHO has specifically stated that industrial plants shouldn't be located within two miles of schools.)
We heard testimony from horse breeders who claimed they could no longer raise thoroughbreds because of the changing air quality and bee farmers who, after generations of family farming, said they can no longer make a living. Not surprisingly, it's a poor community with a high percentage of Black residents. No public hearings were even held before the plant's opening, which Senator Manchin attended. Still, local resistance to it has been strong and continues to grow.
The Vulnerable Suffer the Consequences
Such suffering and resistance are realities not just in the hills and hollows of West Virginia. At the very time when West Virginians were rallying against the Rockwool Ranson Plant, for example, protests broke out in New York City against Mayor Eric Adams' crackdown on the unhoused, including police sweeps of homeless encampments.
No wonder we in the Poor People's Campaign travelled from that Moral March on West Virginia directly to New York to hold a Moral March on Wall Street. And just as Joe Manchin has gotten away with attacks on the poor while styling himself a populist hero, so Eric Adams has insisted that the sweeps he ordered are what's best for New Yorkers, including the unhoused. Yet the true depth of homelessness there belies the cruel measures Adams is pursuing.
In a city that spends more than $2 billion a year on homelessness, roughly 47,000 people - more than 14,500 of them children - sleep in its homeless shelters each night. Rather than address the scourge of poverty and the homelessness that goes with it, Adams has chosen to destroy more than 200 homeless encampments, while all-too-symbolically cutting the city's homelessness budget by one-fifth. Like Manchin, he's pursuing an all-too-familiar path in twenty-first century America: punishing the poor for their poverty while further gentrifying the city as a playground for the rich.
This is not, however, happening without a fight from the unhoused, local grassroots organizations, and even some politicians. The majority of New York's City Council, for instance, has denounced his encampment demolitions. In a letter of opposition, they pointed out that "these sweeps will not end homeless[ness]; they will only put people in further harm."
Amid all of this, one comment by Adams stopped me in my tracks. While meeting with a group of clergy, he argued that the disciples of Christ would have supported his homeless encampment sweeps, saying, "I can't help but to believe that, if Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were here today, they would be on the streets with me helping people get out of encampments."
As a Christian preacher and biblical scholar, I should note that such a statement is not simply wrong or insensitive; it's heretical. The Bible is clear that the rich and powerful are to blame for poverty, abuse, and injustice, not the poor themselves. And not surprisingly, throughout the ancient scriptures, those who hoard the wealth of the world also twist the words of the prophets to their own advantage at the expense of the poor and exploited.
But, as the story goes, just as Jesus was crucified and died, the tombs of the freedom fighters who came before him were opened and they were revived to continue the fight for justice. Hate and death, we are reminded, never have the last word.
Building Movements Not Monuments
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