Building the new freedom church of the poor.

People in the United States have recently started to talk in terms of "class" again because of the polarization between rich and poor and the rise of poverty. (1) Poor people are harbingers of what middle-income people are increasingly beginning to experience: the inability to obtain medical care because they have no health insurance, working longer and harder as real wages decline, sudden unemployment and dislocation due to company downsizing or outsourcing. Middle-income people are being driven into poverty. Further there is no class divide between "poor" people and "working" people. Poor people are working people, whether they are in workfare jobs for inadequate benefits or adjunct professorships or day laboring positions or low-wage service jobs.

Accompanying the rise in poverty has been a rise in proposals, policies and plans put forth on how to "end" or "reduce" poverty both here and around the world. There are those who argue that the free market should be allowed to operate in an unfettered manner so that people and developing nations can compete with the U.S. and "better themselves" by their own efforts. There are those that believe ending poverty is principally a matter of charity: private donations must be redoubled here in the U.S., foreign aid must be increased and debts forgiven by the richest countries to the poorest. There are those that believe that it means wiping out "extreme" poverty (the one billion people who live on less than 1 US dollar a day). There are those who argue for greater trade protections for U.S. companies, workers and the environment. There are others who argue for a return to the welfare state in the U.S. and are fighting cutbacks in public housing and other programs. There are many who argue for various combinations of all of the above.

Because poverty is a social problem, and social problems need social solutions, it is important to consider how vast social change has occurred in the past. History shows that significant social change requires the people who are most affected to be at the forefront of such transformative efforts.

For example abolishing slavery required, among other things, challenging the stereotype that slavery was a benign institution. Northern abolitionists were not able by themselves to effectively counter this stereotype. The construction of the Underground Railroad by slaves and former slaves decisively showed that slavery was not benign--people were willing to die to escape it and risk their lives helping others to do so. The Underground Railroad was a form of non-violent rebellion against slavery by slaves. The very people who had lived under slavery were organizing mass escape from it and these former slaves were then testifying across the North to slavery's horror. The organizing action of the slaves combined with the abolitionist agitation of publications, speaking tours, the creation of schools for slaves and boycotts awakened the conscience of people across the nation whose resounding demand for abolition could no longer be ignored.

Slaves played a leading role in the movement to abolish slavery. People who are most affected by unjust systems must be at the forefront of efforts to change those systems. Can you imagine the struggle for women's rights without the leadership of women? Or the struggle for civil rights without the leadership of African-Americans? It's almost impossible to conceive. Ending poverty will similarly require the poor to be in the forefront of the struggle.

Almost forty years ago, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote

    The dispossessed of this nation--the poor, both white and Negro
    live in a cruelly unjust society. They must organize a revolution
    against injustice ... against the structures through which the
    society is refusing to take means which have been called for, and
    which are at hand, to lift the load of poverty ... The only real
    revolutionary, people say, is a man who has nothing to lose. There
    are millions of poor people in this country who have very little,
    or even nothing, to lose. If they can be helped to take action
    together, they will do so with a freedom and a power that will be a
    new and unsettling force in our complacent national life ... Those
    who choose to join ... this nonviolent army, this "freedom church"
    of the poor, will ... develop nonviolent action skills. (2)

By May of 1967 the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was convinced that the gains of integration and voting rights were being undermined by the intertwined threats of poverty and militarism. He asserted to the leadership of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference that it is "necessary for us to realize that we have moved from the era of civil rights to human rights." (3) He was convinced that a broad social movement to end poverty must be built upon the leadership of poor people--who had neither a stake in the perpetuation of poverty (they were poor) nor the continuance of the Vietnam War (they were fighting it). He called for a "revolution of values" in our nation such that America would no longer be content with "flinging a coin toward a beggar" but would press our nation to restructure the very edifices that produce poverty.

Over the next months King and SCLC planned a poor people's march to Washington, DC for April 1968 where "waves of the nation's poor and disinherited [would] demand redress of their grievances by the United States government." (4) Early on in the month of the planned march, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. The Poor People's March took place more or less as planned and Resurrection City, a shanty-town, of several thousand poor people from all races and places in the United States was built on the Washington Mall. Protests and demands were put forward to Congress and the Johnson Administration. But despite Dr. King's hope for an ongoing Poor People's Campaign, (5) no sustained movement emerged from these actions. Admittedly there was disagreement within the leadership of SCLC about this new strategy and direction and without Dr. King's leadership there was a loss of energy for building this movement. But more importantly the social and economic conditions of the time were not yet pressing hard enough and broadly enough on American society to compel people into action.

Dr. King anticipated the social and economic conditions that are presenting themselves today. (6) The economic structures of the free market and our nation's current public policies that protect it continue to impoverish the people they purport to serve. The way the question of class asserts itself at the bottom of our society is that it compels people to move--you resist or you die. And from this necessary struggle for survival, the "freedom church of the poor" for which King yearned and for which he died, is being reborn.

We, the writers of this paper, are a part of the University of the Poor, the educational arm of the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC). The Campaign was formed by poor people in 1998 and is committed to uniting the poor across color lines as the leadership base for building a broad social movement to abolish poverty. We offer these reflections in the hope of spurring a necessary and urgent conversation among religious and academic leaders and this growing movement to end poverty that is led by the poor.

As a way of studying King's proposal that a "new and unsettling force" a "freedom church of the poor" must be created if we are to end poverty, this paper will look closely at the quote above from Trumpet of Conscience for what its says about the character of this social movement and the conditions of poverty that necessitate its birth. We will also refer to other works which King wrote in the final years of his life to illumine the vision he lays out succinctly here.

"The dispossessed of this nation--the poor, both white and Negro live in a cruelly unjust society." Significantly, Dr. King states that poverty is not principally a problem of race, though racism unarguably aggravates poverty. (7) Instead he asserts that poverty is a result of structural injustice and it is affecting people of all races. He calls upon the poor to unite together, across color lines because it's practically necessary if change is to be brought about. King continues, "In the treatment of poverty nationally, one fact stands out: there are twice as many white poor as Negro poor in the United States." (8) Today the largest number of people who are poor in the U.S. continues to be "non-Hispanic whites." (9) King reminds us that it is extremely important for poor people of all races to begin to see the economic plight they share and the power they can accrue and awaken by joining together across racial divides.

One of the ways the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign breaks the isolation of the poor and challenges stereotypes today is to organize events and marches that bring poor people of different races and from different parts of the country together. On one Economic Human Rights bus tour in 2002, a poor African-American mother who receives public assistance and lives in the Kensington section of Philadelphia was sitting with a poor Caucasian small farmer from Kansas. As they ate dinner the farmer put his fork down and said, "Do you know that everything I know about you comes from what I see on T.V.?" Together they began a conversation about how the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was destroying small farmers while it was displacing jobs in urban neighborhoods. (10)

King continues, "They must organize a revolution against injustice ... against the structures through which the society is refusing to take means which have been called for, and which are at hand, to lift the load of poverty ... The only real revolutionary, people say, is a man who has nothing to lose. There are millions of poor people in this country who have very little, or even nothing, to lose. If they can be helped to take action together, they will do so with a freedom and a power that will be a new and unsettling force in our complacent national life ..."

Who must organize this revolution against injustice? King answers: poor people. In stark contrast to prevailing stereotypes and current public policy that assume people are poor because they are lazy, over-sexed, or incompetent, King insists that it is our unjust society, not poor people that must be transformed. (11) He is well aware that the structural nature of poverty limits the choices available for people to realize their rights and the goals they value in life. King's is not an individualistic, "bootstraps" understanding of agency that expects a poor person to defy or escape the forces of market economics and to leave their loved ones behind to suffer in poverty. King does not argue that poor people need to be taught morals or job skills or even offered a scholarship to college. His understanding of the agency of the poor recognizes that no single person can change the system alone. Instead King believes that poor people have the intelligence, moral strength, experience and love necessary to build and to lead a new and powerful social movement that will transform society for the good of all.

Not only does King forswear "reform" or "tinkering" with "the edifice that produces poverty" in Trumpet of Conscience, he actually uses the word "revolution." As the leader of one of the largest and most successful non-violent movements for social change in U.S. history we must take his choice of words very seriously. King is not being hyperbolic; there was too much at stake for trivial grandstanding. There were riots in the streets and the threat of more violence at hand when King wrote these words. So what kind of "revolution" is this? It is a revolution against injustice; against injustice not against people or governments. Organizing a revolution against injustice means drawing a line and refusing to ignore or legitimize those structures that defraud and demean and destroy people. Positively rendered, this revolution against injustice is a revolution of values that brings about a "people-oriented society" rather than a "thing-oriented society." (12) This revolution of values involves an utter rethinking of old structures and the creating of new structures that ensure the economic human rights of everyone.

King argues that our nation (and by extension our world) exists not in a state of scarcity but a state of abundance. The fundamental question in this era is that of distribution, not production. (13) Therefore a revolution against injustice which has the poor in the forefront of the struggle is necessary to prick the conscience of the vast majority of Americans and create the political will required to reallocate resources and ensure rights. King is not being a starry-eyed dreamer here. He knows quite well he's calling into question the increasing concentration of wealth and power of those who control the activity in world production and markets. In his presidential address to the SCLC in 1967 King proclaimed,

    We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life's
    marketplace. (Yes.) But one day we must come to see that an edifice
    which produces beggars needs restructuring. (All right.) It means
    that questions must be raised. And you see, my friends, when you
    deal with this you begin to ask the question, "Who owns the oil?"
    (Yes.) You begin to ask the question, "Who owns the iron ore?"
    (Yes.) You begin to ask the question, "Why is it that people have
    to pay water bills in a world that's two-thirds water?" (All
    right.) These are words that must be said. (Yes.) (14)

King believed that building the unity of the poor would break every stereotype about poverty--it would unveil that poverty is a structural economic problem once and for all. And its moral demand would be impossible to ignore. It would rouse the people of this nation to a revolution of values. And this re-orientation, this valuing of humanity would not only reorder and renew America, it would reorder and renew the world. "Equality with whites will not solve the problems of either whites or Negroes if it means equality in a world society stricken by poverty and in a universe doomed to extinction by war." (15) King's vision is no utopian feel-good proposition, rather it is a "new and unsettling force." It is an organized, social movement which has at its lead a "non-violent army" of poor people of all races that convicts the conscience of America and in so doing harnesses the strength to demand a radical redistribution of economic and political power. And for some, that is not good news.

It is helpful to contrast King's vision of a multi-racial "freedom church of the poor" that will bring moral renewal and invigorate democracy by mobilizing "we the people" to seek the "liberty and justice for all" that are at the heart of America's creed, with the analysis of J. Brian Atwood, Administrator at the U.S. Agency for International Development. Atwood similarly believes that the growth of poverty is producing a class of people who will "unsettle" society but he views this principally as a threat rather than as a great hope.

    The global financial crisis has thrown even more people into
    extreme poverty ... These individuals, most of them ordinary peace-
    loving people in search of a better life for their children,
    constitute a significant potential threat. Why?... They are a
    threat when they become desperate ... They then move from the
    category of humanitarian problem to destabilizing force ... How do
    normal peace-loving people become desperate? They become desperate
    when they see their children dying of diseases that are easily
    cured by modern medicines accessible to people with resources. They
    become desperate when they ... cannot feed their families. They
    become desperate when they cannot overcome the squalor of
    overcrowded cities and when governments cannot provide for their
    human needs ... People who are excluded from the formal economy ...
    have no stake in society ... The expanding population of alienated,
    voiceless poor is creating serious international tension that is
    now threatening the new conditions in favor of democratic and
    market-based institutions. (16)

Compare Atwood's statement with that of Dr. King, "The only real revolutionary, people say, is a man who has nothing to lose. There are millions of poor people in this country who have very little, or even nothing, to lose. If they can be helped to take action together, they will do so with a freedom and a power that will be a new and unsettling force in our complacent national life ..." Dr. King knew that people with "little, even nothing to loose," who had no stake in continuing with the way things are and every reason to make a moral and material demand for change, would need to be the ones to lead a broad-based movement for change. While Atwood fears that poor people will move "from the category of humanitarian problem to destabilizing force," King believes that the humanitarian problem should be a destabilizing force! It should destabilize all of the scaffolds of legitimacy that prop up unjust systems at the expense of people. The humanitarian problem, as we are confronted by it in this unified, multi-racial movement of poor people should destabilize the values that permit economic edifices to impoverish people with stunning regularity and viciousness.

Dr. King was not insensitive to the brutal hardships of poverty or the urgent need for those who have been "disinherited" to inherit the rights and well-being that are theirs as children of God. But from his experience in the struggle for civil rights he knew the truth of Fredrick Douglass's statement, "Power concedes nothing without a demand." The point of the Resurrection City shanty town on the mall was to demonstrate both the abject conditions of poverty to Americans and the world at large as well as serve as a project of survival for people who had nothing back home. King wanted the urgency of poor people's survival and their non-violent insistence that "it could be otherwise" to become the driving force that, once made visible to the American people, would inaugurate a "revolution of values" and awaken the conscience of America, bringing enough power from people of good-will across the society that Congress would be compelled to reorder the entire "edifice that produces poverty." (17)

"Those who choose to join ... this nonviolent army, this "freedom church" of the poor, will ... develop nonviolent action skills." King never argued that poor people as a social group would or could end poverty. Rather he argued that poor people are the ones who must and will ignite the revolution of values that will unsettle and revive the conscience of America. The only way that change would come is if, through the leadership of the poor, the mass of American society could experience this revolution of values that prioritized people over things. The Poor People's Campaign placed poor people as a social group in the leadership of the campaign to end poverty, but the movement would necessarily involve people from all walks of life, just as the movement to abolish slavery involved both the leadership of slaves and abolitionists. Since the campaign would involve nationwide non-violent actions, then masses of people would need to be trained in non-violence. (18) Those who choose to join would become members in the "non-violent army of the poor" or the "freedom church of the poor." King knew that confronting the "powers and principalities" demands the discipline of an "army" and the moral strength and velocity of a "church."

What does this "non-violent army of the poor" or "freedom church of the poor" look like? It is the process and collection of the non-violent activities of the poor, united across color lines, which provokes a broad social movement to abolish poverty. King never spells it out completely because the freedom church of the poor is created by living not in abstraction. It is the unified poor and those who are awakened by their leadership that will breathe life into this metaphor. The freedom church of the poor describes both the non-violent activities of the unified poor and the manner in which the non-violent activities of the poor unsettle, and call forth from this nation a determination and imagination that will be satisfied with nothing less that a restructuring of those systems that produce poverty.

In 1998 the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign was formed by poor and homeless people who were fighting for survival in the wake of the "end of welfare as we know it" in 1996. Cheri Honkala, National Spokesperson, explains,

    A storm we never believed we would see in our wealthy country came
    with great speed and the amount of damage has yet to be documented.
    After 60 years of having a social safety net in the United States
    of America, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunities
    Reconciliation Act of 1996 ended welfare as we knew it in our
    country. Lobby efforts on a state and national level were no longer
    enough. We needed to link with the poor throughout the United
    States and we needed outside help from our poor brothers and
    sisters throughout the world. We didn't know how we were going to
    reach others throughout the United States let alone throughout the
    world. We saw that welfare reform was a law that was passed that
    would eventually deny people the right to eat and have a roof over
    their heads and worst of all--people would eventually die. We know
    that welfare reform was a violation of our economic human rights
    and that since these were human rights violations we were talking
    about we needed to go to the United Nations. (19)

The Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC) is committed to uniting the poor across color lines as the leadership base for building a broad movement to abolish poverty. (20) The Campaign works to accomplish this through advancing economic human rights as named in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights--such as the rights to food, housing, health, education, communication and a living wage job. "It has been a struggle to implement these human rights principles in the United States because the poor have been invisible and kept unorganized. The next generation of children depend upon us getting organized and we are determined to do just that," insists Honkala. (21) As farm workers in Florida, workfare moms in Kensington, Philadelphia, labor pool workers in Baltimore, poverty-wage workers in Maine, deaf and deaf-blind people in Ohio, public housing residents in Chicago, small farmers in Kansas and homeless families in California the PPEHRC carries forward the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.'s Poor People's Campaign through organizing, projects of survival, economic human rights documentation and non-violent direct action.

For the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, the expression "freedom church of the poor" is both metaphor and reality. It is metaphor insofar as the members of the Campaign are people who come from many different faith communities, "church" being but one expression. It is a reality insofar as this is a movement of faith, a movement that steps forward and walks together with conviction into the uncertain future while remaining confident in its destiny. The "freedom church of the poor" is a reality because of the church's foundation in the Bible, and the Bible is the only "mass media" that has anything good to say about the poor.

For Campaign members who are Christian, the "freedom church of the poor" is a reality because God "hears the cry of the poor" and calls the poor "blessed." This freedom church of the poor has not only speed but direction. It is an emancipatory movement, courageous and intent, drawing on the exodus promise of well-being. It is a community of inter-dependence drawing on the vision of a covenant community known through the law, corrected by the prophets, and embodied by Jesus and the Acts community. It is realized through our projects of survival where homeless people take over abandoned public property and even abandoned churches and establish "tent cities" where we share all we have with each other while making a public demand for the economic human rights all of us need. It is realized in our mass marches which bring thousands of people together to confront the economic and political powers of our day, remembering that Jesus, as he entered into Jerusalem, led the crowds to the temple, the site of economic exchange and political collusion with Rome, and overturned the money changers' tables.

We believe that King fully understood the significant challenges and possibilities that lay before us today, indeed, that he anticipated them. We believe that his call to unite the poor across color lines is the first step in revealing the structural nature of poverty and unsettling a nation that has fallen asleep while millions suffer. Together, as poor people from every race and place in America and people from all walks of life, the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign is taking up Dr. King's challenge to build the new freedom church of the poor in hope and with determination. Membership is open to all.

Notes

1. You know the question of class is re-asserting itself when both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal take up the issue! See "Shadowy Lines That Still Divide," Janny Scott and David Leonhardt, New York Times, May 15, 2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/15/national/class/OVERVIEW-FINAL.html?ex=1118289600&en=b5fe8a273ca2dba4&ei=5070. "As Wealth Gap Widens. Class Mobility Stalls," David Wessel, Wall Street Journal, May 13, 2005.

2. From Trumpet of Conscience, Martin Luther King, Jr., 1967, reprinted in A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr., James Melvin Washington, (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco), 1986, pp. 650-651.

3. Speech at staff retreat [of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)] by Martin Luther King, Jr. Transcript, May, 1967. Penn Center, Frogmore, South Carolina.

4. Press conference [announcing the Poor People's Campaign] by Martin Luther King, Jr., 1967. Transcript, 4 December. Atlanta, Georgia. <http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/publications/papers/unpub/671204-003_Announcing_Poor_Peoples_campaign.htm> (9 December 2002).

5. Economic security, decent sanitary housing, and quality education for every American, Statement of overall objectives, Poor People's Campaign, 1968, see Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged, Guaranteed National Income, Poverty, Third World.

6. Some of these conditions include the nation's current state of "overproduction," the transition from a labor intensive industrial economy to a technology intensive economy, the creation of poverty-wage jobs in the service sector, the shredding of the AFDC "safety net" and with it the loss of entitlement programs, the erosion of the "right to rights." Bricker-Jenkins, M., & Baptist, W. (in press). From sleeping under to marching over bridges: The movement to end poverty in the United States. In Welsh, C., & Howard-Hassman, R. E. (Eds.), Sleeping under bridges: Economic rights in Canada and the United States. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

7. In 2003, 20.1% (4.4 million) of children under six were poor, and the rates for minorities were far higher: 35.7% for young black children and 29.1% among Hispanics. The 2003 unemployment rate for African Americans was 10.8%, 7.7% for Hispanics, and 6.0% for Asians and compared to 5.2% for whites. Both sets of figures are from "Minorities Fact Sheet", February 2005, State of Working America, Economic Policy Institute, www.epinet.org.

8. Ibid, p.161.

9. "Although non-Hispanic whites had a lower poverty rate than other racial groups, they accounted for 44 percent of the people in poverty." U.S. Census Bureau, "Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2003 (P60-226), Press Release, August 26, 2004, www.census.gove/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/income_wealth/002482.html.

10. Lucas Benitez from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a community-based organization of farmworkers picking in Florida whose members are predominantly from Mexico, Guatemala and Haiti, adds to another dimension to the impact of NAFTA. Many of the farmworkers picking in the U.S. are displaced small farmers from Mexico whose family farms have gone bankrupt because their maize is being undersold by US agribusiness in their tiny villages. See the testimony of Lucas Benitez before the U.S. Congress on the impact of NAFTA and the FTAA, June 2003, http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/8803. The CIW is a member organization of the PPEHRC.

11. To wit see the preamble and text of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act which ended welfare as we knew it in 1996. Since 1996, the federal government has given states fixed block grants to fund their welfare programs. The states had wide latitude in designing their programs but their programs had to promote the four objectives of the PRWORA: (1) Provide assistance to needy families so that children can be cared for at home. (2) End dependence on assistance by promoting work (typically called "workfare"). (3) Prevent and reduce the incidence of out-out-wedlock pregnancies. (4) Encourage and promote marriage.

12. Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community, Martin Luther King, Jr., (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers), 1967, p. 186.

13. Indeed in the U.S. today we are in a state of "overproduction" despite the cries of "downsizing." See Bricker-Jenkins, M., & Baptist, W. (in press). From sleeping under to marching over bridges: The movement to end poverty in the United States. In Welsh, C., & Howard-Hassman, R. E. (Eds.), Sleeping under bridges: Economic rights in Canada and the United States. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

14. "Where Do We Go From Here?" (Presidential address to SCLC in 1967, published under the title "New Sense of Direction in Worldview," April 1972) in Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr., ed. James M. Washington, (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco), 1986, p.250.

15. Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community, Martin Luther King, Jr., (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers), 1967, p. 167. King was one of the most outspoken opponents of the War in Vietnam. But his opposition was not simply a function of an intellectual commitment to non-violence. Rather he contended that the war diverted billions of dollars that were necessary for ending poverty here in the United States to "unite" poor black and white soldiers to go and kill poor Vietnamese soldiers. "I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demoniacal destructive suction tube. And so I was increasingly compelled to see the war not only as a moral outrage but also as an enemy of the poor, and to attack it as such." Trumpet of Conscience, Martin Luther King, Jr., reprinted in A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr., James Melvin Washington, (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco), 1986, p.635.

16. Speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, Washington, D.C. (September 10, 2998), J. Brian Atwood, http://web.elastic.org/~fche/mirrors/www.jya.com/jba091098.htm

17. King understood the global nature of the challenge. Movements will be required around the world. "We in the West must bear in mind that the poor countries are poor primarily because we have exploited them through political or economic colonialism. Americans in particular must help their nation repent of her modern economic imperialism. But movements in our countries alone will not be enough." Trumpet of Conscience, Martin Luther King, Jr., 1967, reprinted in A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr., James Melvin Washington, (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco), 1986, p. 652.

18. "We felt there is an alternative both to violence and to useless timid supplications for justice. We cannot condone either riots or the equivalent evil of passivity. And we know that nonviolent militant action in Selma and Birmingham awakened the conscience of white America and brought a moribund, insensitive Congress to life. The time has come for a return to mass nonviolent protest." Showdown for Nonviolence, Martin Luther King, Jr., 1968, as reprinted in A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr., James Melvin Washington, (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco), 1986, p.65.

19. Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign: Born in the U.S.A., 1998, from the Collected Speeches of Cheri Honkala, to be published in 2005, University of the Poor.

20. While the PPERHC is based in the United States it has partnerships with many poor people's movements around the world such as the MST in Brazil and Mothers of the Disappeared in Argentina. To learn more about the PPEHRC and its non-violent fight against poverty through projects of survival, mass marches, poverty truth commissions, economic human rights documentation, boycotts, living wage campaigns, housing take-overs and more, visit the PPERHC website at www.economichumanrights.org.

21. Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign: Born in the U.S.A., 1998, from the Collected Speeches of Cheri Honkala, to be published in 2005, University of the Poor.