 My name is Mark Hughes. I'm with Justice for All, a local organization. But we are here joining together to make a proclamation for the Poor People's Campaign, a national call for moral revival. You see, all across the country, in state capitals and Washington, DC, policies that promote systemic racism, they promote poverty and the war economy, and the environmental destruction are threatening a democracy and the decaying of our national morality. Young DACA recipients are treated as political pawns, and black and brown people are being kept from the polls by racialized voter suppression laws. 50 years ago, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., he called for a poor people's campaign to begin a revolution of values in America. He and other leaders invited people of all races and religions to unite against the evils of racism, against poverty, and militarism. Today, a new Poor People's Campaign is needed to save America's soul. The Poor People's Campaign, a national call for a moral revival, will reignite the effort to unite the poor, disenfranchise, and marginalize to transform our nation's political, economic, and moral structures of our society. This isn't a mere commemoration of the work of Dr. King and others 50 years ago. It is a consecration of a new moral movement to transform a political, economic, and moral structures of a society. The conditions that motivated Dr. King and others to launch the original Poor People's Campaign have worsened over the last 50 years. With the forces of white supremacy and greed gaining even more influence in Washington and in state houses across the country, the need for a poor people's campaign is more urgent than ever. Economic inequity has only accelerated since 1968, while voter suppression, those laws of mass incarceration furthers entrenched systemic racism in America. Now listen, did you know that since 2010 that 23 states have passed racist voter suppression laws? 23. Did you know that in, since, that July 2017, 25 states passed laws to preempt cities from passing their own local minimum wage laws? As of 2016, there are 40.6 million people living below the poverty line. It's a crime shame, ain't it? Now listen, nearly three quarters of the people living below the poverty line are women and children. And since 1976, raised federal spending on prisons has increased tenfold to $7.5 billion. The number of state and federal inmates grew from 188,000 in 1968 to 5 million in 2015. At the height of the Vietnam War, military spending was about $354 billion. And today it's nearly twice that, at 635 billion. 53 cents out of every discretionary dollar of our taxes goes directly, directly to the military. In 2013, 23,000 active duty military troops were receiving food stamps. And in December of 2017, there were more than 60,000 new foreclosures, bringing the total properties of foreclosure to over 572,000 nationally. And in 2017, three individuals had a combined wealth of $248.5 billion. Three people, the same amount of wealth at a bottom 50% of US households of 160 million people. And 4 million families with children are being exposed to high levels of lead right now. And finally, 13.8 million low-income households cannot afford water. This number could triple if water prices continue to rise. Our campaign aims to build a broad and a deep national moral movement rooted in leadership of poor people and reflecting the great moral teachings to unite our country from the bottom up. Demand a change in course. That's right. And today we serve notice that if our voices are not heard and our issues remain unaddressed, we are prepared to take direct action and engage in nonviolent civil disobedience. Reverend Joan Javier Duvall, I serve as minister of the Unitarian Church of Montpelier. And we are here this afternoon because we need a revolution of values in America and here in Vermont. Do you believe that? That's when he called for a poor people's campaign in 1968 and this remains true today. The poor people's campaign that we build on today took seriously the prophet Isaiah's call to learn to do right, to seek justice and to defend the oppressed. In the new poor people's campaign, we are united across race, class and religion. And we seek to change the moral narrative of this nation. Seek to do right, to seek justice and to join in solidarity with the oppressed. And we need to remember that it is the heart and soul of our democracy that is at stake when we allow economic inequality to grow, when we seek to profit from our criminalization systems, when we target immigrants and refugees, and when we pillage this earth, our home for the sake of profit. Revolution of values is something that we can all be a part of. And we are here today in the state house to especially share this message with our elected leaders who are here to represent us, we the people. That's right. So people of faith and people of conscience are called in this moment to hold our political leaders at the national and local levels accountable to their highest responsibility to work for the good of not just some people, but all people. Yeah, everybody. To do this, because unfortunately, as Mark said earlier, the forces of greed and white supremacy have been becoming even more influential and powerful in Washington, and we must stay vigilant to these forces at work even in our beloved state of Vermont. Yes, that's right. That's our country. We are witnessing an assault on the poor to line the pockets of the most wealthy. We are witnessing an assault on immigrants, tearing families apart and destroying communities. We are witnessing an assault on black and brown people as hate groups become emboldened and human rights are threatened and taken away. And we are witnessing an assault on this earth, our precious home, as more and more of our natural resources become unprotected and corporations pursue a seemingly unquenchable thirst for fossil fuels. I believe that our moral character as a community must be judged by how we treat the most marginalized in our society. Yeah, that's right. And how we treat this beloved precious planet. So, will we be a society that takes care of children that are hungry and that desperately need medical attention, or will we be a society that says, good luck, you are on your own? Yes. Will we be a society that invests in education and a sustainable future for our planet? Yes. I hope so, or will we choose to be a society that continues to perpetuate violence against our siblings across the globe and against our planet? No. Will we be a society that stands up to the hate-filled voices in our communities and proclaims a message of welcome and inclusion? Yes. Or will we be a society that allows division to fester and to tear us apart? No. So the new Poor People's Campaign is about choosing the side of morality. It is about choosing the side of love and justice. Together, we will work for policies that create a more equitable and more hopeful present and future for our children, our grandchildren, and for us all. So I'm here this morning to say that people of faith and conscience are here. We will continue to show up. We will continue to demand change until the tide has turned and morality has reclaimed its place in our democracy. Yes. Thank you so much for those inspiring words. I am Rabbi Shana Margolin, the ritual chair of Beth Jacob Synagogue. Our sacred writings teach that we are created in the image of God. It means that we are all created equal. Our secular documents reflect that belief. We are all equal. And as equals, every citizen has an equal right to vote. And we raise our voices in protest and we raise our voices for change when we see states enacting laws that suppress the votes, especially of people of color and of people who are poor. Teachings insist that employers, those in power, treat their workers fairly and with dignity. Do not hold back the wages of a hired worker overnight, we read in Leviticus. Do not take a millstone as security for a debt because that would be taking a person's livelihood, we see. And so we raise our voices for change when we see the struggles of people working two or three low-paid jobs. We raise our voices for change when we see the vast disparities in how hard work is rewarded, when the person at the top can make 300 times as much as the low-paid workers who have a debt. We hear the challenge of the Prophet Isaiah to lose the chains of injustice, to set free the oppressed, to assure that no one goes hungry, that no one is homeless, that we as a society care for all because that is the moral imperative. Then, as Isaiah says, our light will break through like the dawn, our goodness will shine. And then we will truly begin, in the words of this effort, we will truly begin a moral revival, a society based on caring, a society based on compassion, a society willing to work together for the good. Yes! Amanda Shepard, I live in Addison County, which is the west side of Vermont, right in the middle, where the lake divides the state of New York and Vermont along the whole coast. Like across the nation in Addison County, there is an extreme wealth living beside extreme poverty, where the little Ivy League School of Middlebury College has an endowment of $1 billion, while the homeless population are overflowing the shelters and are hiding along the rivers and other places just outside the college's fields. For me, desiring a safe, secure home and a community where I would expect to financially flourish has come with extremely high expenses, such as rent and taxes. I too fear of being homeless again with two children while working unpaid for most of the work I do. I have continually been depleted of my emergency funds because of these high costs, despite always taking on new kinds of work. These high costs have caused me to face housing instability that has directly affected my health. I myself depend on Medicaid because the state doesn't pay me a livable wage and denies my workforce full-time benefits. I'm always in a cycle of catching up with pay and increasing expenses, co-pays, out-of-pocket health care, fees and fines, and as an organizer in the state for different organizations, including the Vermont Workers' Center, as well as providing home care, I see the gaps in our system on every level. My clients are often shamed by their doctors and labeled as non-compliant when they're trying to have a meaningful say in their care. Some worry about homelessness and are too afraid of losing custody of their children to admit it. So when I hear on the Vermont Low-Income Advocacy Board that not one single pregnant woman in her ninth month has requested housing, I can't help but think that it's because she fears she'll lose custody of your child when it's born, simply because she's homeless and has to admit her lack of access to secure housing. Many seemingly easy solutions, such as moving around where the work is or moving from a relatively affordable house to another home, leads to additional instability in education, access to kids' cystic care, and mental health. And mental health is a huge part of the healthcare that is often stigmatized. Though a huge population face these struggles daily, 34% of Vermonters are on Medicaid, meaning they too are low income, making tough choices about whether to pay rent or pay for uncovered medical expenses. There's a huge disconnect between people's needs in this country and our government's willingness to respect and address our failing healthcare system that puts profit over people and it perpetuates poverty. Destroying essential connections and stunting our abilities to grow as a community. Profit and wealth are being held by very few while the rest of us are working three jobs and are humiliated at the local agencies for asking for help. This is why we need a Port People's Campaign, a national call for a moral revival. I see now that our laws, our ordinances, our systems are all set up unjustly. We need a new way to govern our people that's based on what is morally just, not what is profitable for a very few. Our media needs to report that the people of Vermont, just like me, are standing together with those across the nation to participate in civil disobedience, nonviolent actions to say that the poor people, that the politics that use the rest of us, the majority of us, and keeps us poor has gone on far too long. Far too long. Far too long. That their capital is in the biggest movement our country has yet to see. Far too long. My name is David Pipkirski. I'm a member of the Vermont Workers' Center and the Vermont Poor People's Campaign. I have been asked to speak about American militarism and its war economy as I am a homeless fetish who presently resides at the Canal Street Veterans Homeless Shelter in Winooski, Vermont. In 1977, at 18 years of age and still in high school, I had joined the Marine Corps. I thought it was a good idea at the time as I wanted to learn some valuable skills to rise out of poverty. At least that is what the recruiter and my culture had told me anyway. Not to mention that my home and school environment was not a healthy one, so I basically had no other choice but to join the Marines. In retrospect, it became the worst mistake of my life and I compare jumping, that I compare jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. What I found in my six years of service were either vets that had just returned home from Vietnam or new recruits like myself from unhealthy home and school environments who were misled to believe that they would escape from poverty by joining the military. Now, at 59 years of age, I find myself homeless for the fourth time. Needless to say, I have never been able to escape living in poverty. One out of every four homeless people are vets. About 20 vets per day commit suicide, more than are actually dying in our endless, senseless, costly, unsuccessful, damaging, and traumatizing wars. Countries never win at war. Both sides always lose. Always. Always. Vets typically suffer from outhaul and drug addiction, post-traumatic stress disorder, physical injury, depression, self-blame for mission failure, survivor guilt, and other mental illnesses, poverty, high costs of housing, and inadequate health care. Never is it discussed as to what the individual loses nor is it discussed what our country truly loses. Let's discuss the financial cost of war first, then subsequently what our country really loses. Yeah. In 2017, the military budget was about $773.5 billion. It is expected to continually climb unless we do something to stop it. This cost does not include externalities, such as reboting a country we have just destroyed. Or what is termed as foreign aid that is essentially money to buy our political will. Our country spends more on our military than the next country is combined. Americans make up only 5% of the world's population, but spend over 50% of the world's total military expenditure. The Pentagon budget consumes over 80% of everyone's individual income tax return. This money could be better spent on health care, child care, and teacher salaries, caring for a most vulnerable population, and allow many people to access college and drop job training. America could work to heal itself and become a respected leader worldwide instead of perpetually being at war and hated by most other countries. Yes, that's right. I just so happen to serve between 77 and 83, one of the few times in our history that America was at peace. Most feds have not been so lucky and are much worse off than myself. When an individual goes to war to witness man's inhumanity to man, they never return. Some bodily and others emotionally. They live in the woods or commit suicide. Being a homeless vet is a direct reflection of America's unhealthy culture and war economy. Yes, yes, yes. The culture that leads a person to willfully join the military to what amounts to killing other people in a foreign country because there are no better alternatives here in our country. The most difficult hurdle for a homeless person to overcome when seeking help from an inadequate system is to trust the very same system and culture that made them homeless in the first place. Thank you. Then they are rewarded by becoming reintegrated into our unhealthy society and living in poverty while our country perpetuates a cycle by enlisting new recruits for a never-ending war. While vets never really return home from war, some never return from living in the woods while they hope and pray that someone will listen and has enough sense to put an end to our war economy. Thank you. Woo! 100 people here on a Monday were out today. Woo! Stay with us. I wanna show the world how seriously people are taking this. My name's Henry Harris. I grew up in the Northeast Kingdom in the 80s. The 80s were a tough time in the kingdom and I've paid my dues as a poor person and as a proud member of the 99% in this state. I'm here today to express my sadness and deep anger about where we find ourselves. That's right, look at that. Come on, now. That's right. Uh-oh, you're on call. I got you. I got you. We are in a crisis. Our government is making little sand castles to resist the waves of this crisis while the rich get richer. Meanwhile, I think this crisis is about to get much worse. This climate crisis is going to exacerbate economic instability, white supremacy and genocidal warfare and poverty. Untold millions of people are gonna be forced into refugee status from drought and other natural disasters. The World Health Organization, the Pentagon, everybody else knows that this crisis may be getting way out of control. The collision course we're on with the climate and the economy is one that has been constructed and deepened deliberately. Yes, absolutely true. Not through incompetence, as many of our modern U.S. presidents and governors make it seem so convincingly, but because of greed. Greed, greed, greed, greed, greed, greed. Bill Scott is just running plays for his bosses at the American Legislative Exchange Council. This is the co-brothers run, Bill Mill, said sending him and governors and lawmakers all over the country the bills that they need to be proposing in their states. Come on. Okay, Cape Town is running out of water. Cape Town is a modern city just like San Francisco. It's a little more segregated. San Francisco is segregated too, and they are about to run out of water on April 12th. They are expecting day zero, running out of water on April 12th and the rich people, the white people are leaving the city and the rest of the residents, mostly black and poor folks, are being left there to deal with the crisis and make it if they can. This situation is a microcosm of what's happening to the planet by a deliberate design of creating crisis to destabilize whole cultures and weaken their hold on their resources. Why do we wanna weaken their hold on their resources so the rich can take them? They're trying to take these resources, right? The rich, tyrant companies and individuals are trying to make us believe that they're stupid enough to believe that unrestrained markets can straighten out our economy. We know they don't believe that and we don't believe that. Kindness and generosity, mainstays of morality for every culture on the planet are what we need to save society. Yes, right, tell us. Greedy, global white supremacist, imperial capitalism is not going to do this no matter what you learned in college. That's right. But it's always Syria. Do you know that this war in Syria was caused because of food and water shortages? All right, Palestine's running out of water, the rate of desertification in sub-Saharan Africa is increasing, swelling whole cultures and languages that will never be spoken again along with countless species of plants and animals. We have friends racing time. Some of us in this room have our friends racing time in their home island of Puerto Rico trying to get their lives, their health systems, their farms and homes back together before the next round of hurricanes hit. That's right. The governor of our state, Philip Scott, insists that the climate crisis is a great opportunity for Vermont. What? Did you see that one liner he stuck to a couple of weeks ago about how cities burning down in California make Vermont look pretty good? Oh. California is the fifth biggest economy in the world, Mr. Race Car Driver, and the destabilization there is not a good sign for our little economy over here. Now, for some, it might seem fun to have mommy's favorite little race car driver as the governor of our state, but this will not do. No, it won't do. So that's where we come in. The world's 99%. We are the power, the people are the power. All right. That's it. That's it. This event is an announcement. This event is an announcement that the 99% is again getting organized, and this event is an invitation for all of us to come out and get involved in doing what is right in protecting the climate and the people and the other living things of this world because that's what's right. Yes. That's right. That's right. Yes, a mass social movement to save us from climate change will keep our planet beautiful and protect our economic interests and keep the resource war away from our doorsteps. But in so doing it will also give us an opportunity to renew a practice of treating each other morally, doing unto each other as we would have done unto us. Yeah. I stand under this golden dome with y'all and challenge their golden rule that whoever has the gold makes the rules. We are the people, we make the rules, and it's time that we get in here with the Poor People's Campaign and make this world a place where we can live and die in dignity. All right. All right. 15 years ago Martin Luther King invited us to join this movement. And one of the things he said was this. We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action. Yes. All right. See many of you here when we return, we will be back. Thank you. Devastation is immoral. Systemic racism is immoral. You are so beautiful here today. It is just an honor to stand here in front of you. Sorry, you're seeing maybe about pretty or sorry. But anyway, it's great to be here today. I'm Earl Cooper Camp. I'm one of the tri-chairs of the Poor People's Campaign here in Vermont. We are here in Vermont. The Poor People's Campaign, a national call for moral revival, planned to open up like we are doing today in 24 other states. Washington, D.C. as well, a truly national movement, a national call for moral revival. State capitals, our sisters and brothers of the Poor People's Campaign are taking a letter to their state representatives. In just a moment, we will take it to our speaker, Mitzi Johnson, the Senate pro tem, Tim Ash. I want to read you this letter. All over the country, in state capitals like Montpelier and Washington, D.C., policies that promote systemic racism, poverty in the war economy, and ecological devastation are threatening our democracy and decaying our national morality. Too often distorted religious articulations confine morality only to personal issues and not public policies. Racist voter suppression laws undermine access to ballot box and the power of the vote, while DACA recipients are treated as political pawns. Where people of all races are being ignored, our political conversation is dismissed and our political decisions are undermined. Programs to sustain the poor are being cut and healthcare, access and living wages are denied at state and federal levels. Meanwhile, the United States House and Senate passed a tax bill that is an obscene transfer of wealth to the richest among us and the president who benefited by this quickly signed it into law. Further cuts that benefit the wealthiest are being passed in state houses all across the country. We demand a change, of course. Our faith traditions in our state and federal constitutions testify to the immorality of an economy that leaves out the poor, yet our political discourse consistently ignores the 140 million poor and low income people living here in these United States of America. We are here today to demand, demand that the committees on the floors of this state legislative body that you uphold the oath that you have taken and represent us, represent us, and on a moral agenda that lifts up the common good and the general welfare. And we are prepared, we are prepared now to take direct action and engage in non-violent civil disobedience to assist our publicists, get our grasp, progress its independence, develop serious proposals to address our agenda. We, we are the poor and disenfranchised, clergy and moral leaders from all across Vermont. We are the poor people's campaign, a national call for moral revival. That politics that ignores the poor has gone far too long. We, we will not be silent anymore. First of all, to the speaker's office, we're just delivering the letter, that's it, no conversation, just let her read it. Then we'll go down to the president pro Tim's office, we will also deliver the letter, he can read it. And then we're gonna gather up over in room 11 to learn a little bit more about what we're doing as the poor people's campaign here in Vermont, a national call for moral revival. I so much, I so much appreciate your time here today. But also, this is just the beginning. We're launching here in Vermont, we're launching in 32 other states, soon we will be nationwide. When the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Dr. King launched the Poor People's Campaign 50 years ago, it's basically Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, little Tennessee, out in Missouri, Arkansas, some of the eastern states. We are reaching all the way from Alaska to Florida. We'll reach it from our brave little state of Vermont all the way to California and Hawaii. This is a movement which will change the moral narrative of our country. Thank you so much. Thank you. Hold up for a minute, hold up for a minute. Before we leave. Hold up for just one second. This is Dr. Altman, he just came in from Southeast Asia. He just approached us and he wanted to just say a couple of words to you before we leave, okay? I've been living on this planet for 83 years and I worked with Martin Luther King. And I only wanna say everything I hear here is beautiful, but I really believe after all the years from the 60s and the 70s and the 80s and the 90s and being proactive, that doing civil disobedience, communicating, holding the powers accountable is important, but I don't believe based upon history. And if MLK was here today, I believe he would agree, there needs to be more active civil disobedience. More active, not just communicating with people, not sending letters. And I think all of that's important, but I believe there needs to be at a national level major active civil disobedience. That's what we're gonna be doing. See you in the middle of it. See you in the middle of it. See you in the middle of it. See you in the middle of it.