Poor People’s Campaign

Martin Luther King Jr’s murder back in 1968 coincided with his planned Poor People’s Campaign. Some people believe this was no coincidence for the powers that be are scared shitless whenever poor people rise up as they see it as a direct threat to their power and position, never mind their wealth.

One only has to read Michael Hudson’s ‘Killing the Host‘ to see how for the past 4 decades or so the system is rigged against the 99%. Forcing people to live with chronic debt is a form of social and political control so much so that materialistic poverty now actually carries the shame that cowardice carried in earlier, warrior times. We are conditioned to blame ourselves rather than Neoliberalism which has been the root cause of so much misery and poverty of the masses while bestowing unimaginable wealth and riches upon the 1%. We are back to the dogma that whatever the wealthy do is good for the poor. What BS!

Today, one doesn’t have to read a book to see poverty and suffering are all around us (although, John Ralston Saul’s Poverty chapter in his ‘Reflections of a Siamese Twin’ or Jack Layton’s ‘Homelessness’ book are excellent primers). In the news, on our street corners, at the food banks, in homeless centers, poverty is everywhere…. and it is growing….  exponentially!

For those that don’t know, property is a legal instrument of oppression, and there is class warfare. The 1% own the property and have been at war with us for some time. And our class is losing, mainly for the most part because we didn’t know we were at war, that a class war had been launched against us since the 1980’s. It’s Time to Wake Up! Time to Stand Up! Time to take back that which rightfully belongs to us, the people, for resentment and hostility boil in the underclass.

“Pain and suffering are good because they goaded the poor into greater efforts, thus the economy is energized”, say our masters. But poverty is not God’s will. It is an artificial, humanly produced blight. A blight that must be erased from the face of the earth. And that will only happen when we, the 99%, stand up and say ‘enough is enough, we ain’t going to take this any more!” We want our land (property) back!

I say, we must organize and bring all disaffected groups together for a Poor People’s Campaign, or Poor People’s March, as MLK once tried, for the purpose of gaining economic justice for poor people throughout our land… and beyond. Its Time! As Roosevelt famously said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”. Remember, we be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.