WASHINGTONAlessandro Morales Cardozo is one of the working poor. Hes also a Dreamer, a janitor, and a Service Employees Local 32BJ shop steward. And hes raising two kids as a single father in D.C., and wondering if or when Donald Trump will throw him out of the country.
And thats why he joined a chilly windswept kickoff to the second Poor Peoples Campaign, on Feb. 5.
If I lose my job as a cleaner in one of D.C.s buildings between the White House and the U.S. Capitol, how will I take care of my kids? Morales Cardozo asked at the campaigns press conference on the Capitol lawn. This my home, he said of the U.S. These are my children. There is no place for me in Mexico, which he left at age 13.
The campaign launched in D.C. and 32 state capitals with letters and petitions to lawmakers and other officials demanding they attack systemic racism, poverty, hunger, the destruction of voting rights and a pro-militarist tilt to federal spending.
It will culminate with 40 days of peaceful civil disobedience, calling attention to those demands, between Mothers Day and the summer solstice. And on that day, June 23, there will be another mass march on Washington, sponsors said.
Organized by the Rev. William Barber, founder and leader of the Moral Mondays movement that began as a crusade for restored voting rights and civil rights in North Carolina and has since spread -- the new Poor Peoples Campaign aims to emulate the first such drive, led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 50 years ago, before his assassination by a white racist.
Like Dr. Kings drive, where the civil rights leader backed workers right to organize and demand respect and decent jobs, this campaign encompasses economic demands as well as political demands. But this time, there are even more causes. The 690,000-800,000 Dreamers, who face deportation by GOP President Trump, is one of them.
In the event in Tallahassee, Fla., for example, the union-backed Alliance for Retired Americans joined a group presenting demands at the state capital where figures released show 88 percent of Floridian jobs pay less than $20 an hour.
There is no shortage of problems the U.S. faces, said Barber, who addressed the D.C. crowd by speakerphone via his co-chairs computer mounted on a speakers stand. There must be a change in our moral narrative and public policy, Barbers voice faintly echoed. What is going on in this country is contrary to our deepest moral values.
We have 14 million children living in poverty and most of them are white, he said,
contrary to popular opinion. That opinion is reinforced by racism and pushed by xenophobic politicians no names were mentioned other speakers said.
The prejudice, the lack of living wages, the tax cuts for the wealthy, the ecological devastation and spending four to five times as much on war and militarism than on programs
to help people all must be focuses of the coming protests, Barber added.
This is why were serving notice today, Barber said.
That notice, at least at the campaigns start, came in letters and petitions to lawmakers, carried by the group in D.C. to the offices of House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. Neither responded. The same scenario played out in Albany, N.Y., statewide campaign organizers there reported.
New York campaign chair Claudia de la Cruz told the crowd "55 percent of jobs in New York pay less than $20 an hour. And it takes $21 an hour for an adult and a child to support themselves. Black and brown households are hurting the most. Over 60 percent of those households are not making anything.
More than half of children in Buffalo and Rochester are living below the federal poverty line. From the Bronx to Newburgh to Hoosick Falls, polluted air and poisoned water are making people sick. And while profits down on Wall St. keep soaring, politicians keep saying 'we can't afford to feed and house and educate and employ everybody. We don't buy it.
Other causes this Poor Peoples Campaign is pushing include legalizing the Dreamers through lawful restoration of the DACA program that let them stay in the U.S. and work in the open, an end to voter oppression laws, stopping ecological havoc, universal health care, reversing federal spending priorities away from the military and pulling the 40 million people now living in poverty out of it, the organizers in D.C. said.
Many of those were in the letter to Ryan and McConnell, leaders of Congress ruling Republicans. Restoring DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) and universal health care are also among labors top priorities.
At least one campaign cause, legalizing the Dreamers, may come to a congressional showdown soon. By March 23, Congress must pass another money bill to keep the government going. The Dreamers demand lawmakers attach the full Dream Act which would legalize their right to stay in the country to it. The point is to get Congress to overcome Trumps plan to throw all of the Dreamers out, starting on March 5.
We demand a change in course. Our faith traditions and our U.S. and state constitutions testify to an immorality that leaves out the poor, the campaigns letter to the lawmakers said. Our Poor Peoples Campaign is to save the soul of America.
Source: PAI