When Genara Clay woke up at 3 a.m. a few months ago in her Concord home, she could not breathe. All Clay could think of was finding a way to open the airways that were tightening in her chest. She tried the nebulizer her doctor had prescribed, but continued to struggle. A trip to the emergency room might be her only way to survive.
But Clay knew from experience that the $1,600 medical bill from the hospital could cost her the apartment she rents. Clay decided to use her nebulizer again, for a third time, then go see her doctor the next day. When the four medicines her doctor prescribed cost more than she could pay, Clay paused at the pharmacy to decide which medicine she could do without. The technician behind the counter told her she understands: She watches people make these calculations every day.
A white woman with a college degree, Clay is not alone. Thirty-six percent of New Hampshire residents – more than 1 in 3 – are one $400 emergency away from not being able to pay their bills next month. And while poverty disproportionately impacts black and brown communities, the vast majority of people in New Hampshire who are struggling to make ends meet look like Clay.
This week, the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival is in New Hampshire because people like Genara Clay are stepping out of the shadows to insist that everyone has a right to live in America. While divisions of race, gender and immigration status are often used to pit poor people against one another, members of this campaign have realized that we must link up and stand together against the intersecting injustices that are hurting millions of Americans.
If the same forces that attack immigrants are also keeping working people from access to health insurance and living wages while investing unprecedented sums in a bloated military budget and denying the real threat of climate change, then we must be wise enough to come together across dividing lines and build a new coalition to lift up the good of the whole.
In the state of New Hampshire today, someone would have to work 120 hours a week at minimum wage to be able to afford a 2-bedroom apartment. More than a third of New Hampshire residents make less $15 an hour, while the income of the top 1% in this state has grown nearly 200% in the past three decades.
For too long, Republicans have blamed the poor for their poverty while Democrats have refused to address poverty, only talking about the needs of the middle class. We believe it’s no accident that the 140 million poor and low wealth people in the United States today roughly equal the 40% of eligible voters who opted not to vote in the 2016 election. While our nation’s political parties spend billions of dollars to win a plurality of the electorate, poor people have not heard their names in public life for nearly half a century.
The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival is currently engaged in a nine-month “We Must Do M.O.R.E.” Tour to Mobilize, Organize, Register and Educate people for a movement that votes. We are connecting with poor and marginalized people in communities where the engagement of 3% to 5% of formerly disengaged people could fundamentally change the balance of power in public life. And we are building power in these communities around a moral agenda that can lift up the good of the whole.
Working with leading experts in policy and economics, poor and impacted people have developed a moral budget to demonstrate that we already have more than enough to address the extreme inequality in American public life. What we lack is a movement to demand accountability of our elected leaders.
This is why, on June 20, 2020, just weeks before both parties hold their nominating conventions, we will be gathering in Washington, D.C., for a Mass Poor People’s Assembly and Moral March on Washington that demands Democrats and Republicans address the needs of poor and low wealth Americans in their 2020 platforms. We will hold public officials accountable at both the state and federal level, and we will continue to organize and build power until we have a government and economy in this nation that serves all people.
If you know that it’s wrong for people to die from poverty in the richest nation in the history of the world, we invite you to join us as we sing, “Everybody’s Got A Right To Live!”
(William J. Barber II is the national co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. The Poor People’s Campaign will hold a Mass Meeting at the First Baptist Church of Nashua this evening, Oct. 11, at 5:30 p.m.)