 It really cuts to the heart of what we're doing here. Everybody has a right to live. Everybody has a right to live. Go down to jail. Has a right to learn. Everybody has a right to health. Everybody has a right to health. And before this campaign fails, we'll all go down to jail. Everybody has a right to health. Everybody has a right to food. Everybody has a right to food. And before this campaign down to jail. Everybody has a right to food. Everybody has a right to life. Everybody has a right to go down to jail. Has a right to live. Everybody has a right to live. And before this campaign down to jail. Everybody has a right to live on my time. Everybody has a right to have a right. Everybody has a right to have a right. Thank you solidarity singers. My name's Earl Cooper Camp. I'm the pastor of the church of the Good Shepherd in Barrie. I am part of the poor national call. In 37 states and in the colony of the District of Columbia, also known as Washington DC, we're gathering together as a moral witness to say, pop with me. One of our chants is that we're working together. Fusion solidarity. You say forward together, you say one step back. Ready, Roger? Forward! For a moral revival in this call of the poor people's campaign, we're looking back. We're looking back on what was done 50 years ago. We're also, though, here together in the present and looking forward to what we are going to do to change the moral nation. Our first speaker is the bishop of Vermont, my boss, Thomas Ealy. Please give it up for Bishop Ealy. Good. So as a person of faith and as Bishop of the Episcopal Church in Vermont, I stand here today to lend my voice and commitment to the poor people's campaign, a national call for moral revival, and his expression right here in Vermont. Somebody is hurting our people, and we respond everybody has the right to live, to love, to food, to health, to learn. I'm grateful for the leadership of Father Cooper Camp and Mark Hughes, who's standing down there. We've got to give a big shout out to Mark, and he'll talk later. This has provided in this effort, for they have brought us to this moment in time when we declare in Mark's words, policies that promote systemic racism, poverty, the war economy, and environmental destruction are threatening our democracy and detaying our national morality. And we're tired of that and don't want to see it continue. That's right. Effort to raise awareness and take concrete action to do all we can to undo the systemic issues that contribute to poverty, inequality, racism, and injustice in our nation, and here in Vermont. My witness as a person of faith is grounded in the conviction that we have a moral imperative to honor and promote the dignity of every human being. I believe we also have a moral imperative to uphold the fundamental human rights of people, of all races, especially those disproportionately impacted by poverty and other forms of systemic injustice and poverty that poverty facilitates. I have here in mind inequality in our legal justice system, especially the disproportionate number of people who are poor, who are incarcerated in this country. That's right. I have in mind here wage inequality and the tendency to blame poor people for their poverty rather than confront the reality that many people who work a full-time job and sometimes more than one just are not able to meet their basic human needs given their wage. That's right. I'm here mindful in mind of racial inequality, a persistent narrative that poverty is a problem about immigrants or people of color or caused by immigrants or people of color rather than a common reality that crosses all races and ethnicities. So as someone from the church, the word revival has a special meaning to me. That's right. But when I think of revival, it suggests that something has flatlined and needs to be shocked back into life. And so we've heard for too long that if we just vote a certain way or wait long enough, things will change for the better. Have they? No. All the while we watch the status quo gain steam as morality slowly dies at the expense of the vulnerability of those in our society who are least able to respond. It doesn't work that way in the kingdom of God. It doesn't work that way in the reign of God. Today, in the spirit of Dr. King and others who called us to this work 50 years ago, we stand together to challenge that narrative. And we bring with us the energy that's needed to give life to humanity, justice, and the dignity of every human being, indeed, all of creation. And so going forward from here, each of us needs to make a commitment. Each of us is challenged to make an effort to understand the truth about poverty. Make a commitment that would allow your heart to change forever. Break your silence and speak out, live out, against systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation, the war economy, and the distorted moral narrative. Replace your body and your life on the line as some will today and every day, willing to lose everything to save the heart and the soul of this nation. Get involved in the Poor People's Campaign, a national call for moral revival, because everybody has the right to live. Everybody has the right to love. Everybody has the right to learn from the effort. Thank you. Do you feel the story of the state capitals making a People's Call Poor People's Campaign against the history today and next week? This is 40 days of action. 40 days of action, gathering together across this nation, looking at what the war economy has done to devastate the lives of the poor in our country. Looking at how the lives of women and children disabled are further and further reduced, even crushed by poverty. We're coming together to speak out one people, one voice. Our next speaker is Richard. Come on, Richard. Richard is at Pleistonsky. He's President of Veterans for Peace. He's speaking here on his over the half, though. So please welcome my brother Richard. I have a few lines to share with you. I wrote these lines as I was preparing a message to present to the Vermont Peace Conference in Burlington last Saturday called Building a World Without War. The message brings attention to the distorted 2019 U.S. budget. These numbers tell the story and this shows the proportion here on this panel. For defense and war, $686 billion is up 13% from 2017. For Veterans Affairs here, which takes care of the wounded, the human cost of war, can you hear me already? The human cost of war, $76 billion up 12% from 2017. This blue portion here is the Department of State, in other words, diplomacy and peace. $26 billion and down 26%. For restoration of the environment and communities, the solid line at the end is zero. Nothing, zero. This display shows the numbers graphically. Here's what I wrote. I call it war and peace. The world can no longer afford war. The costs are too great. Veterans killed, veterans wounded, civilians killed, civilians wounded. Cities destroyed. Land, forests, water, air polluted and destroyed. Little or no money to care for the wounded. No money to rebuild destroyed communities. No money to restore land, forests, air and water. War makes us all, every one of us, poor people. There's no alternative. We must foster peace every day in every way. Learn to be at peace in yourself. Foster peace in your family, in your community, in the nation and in the world. Thank you. Our enemy is killing us. This war economy is killing us. And so what we're going to say, and I'm going to get my brother Roger up his can later again, if we can't have it, shut it down. Okay, you ready? If we can't have it, shut it. We began this campaign actually yesterday. What was yesterday? It was in response to the devastation of the military economy then. The devastation of the Civil War. The original Mother's Day proclamation called for a day of peace. We began this day of peace in our nonviolent moral fusion direct action. We know that mothers know the cost of a war economy. Mothers know the cost of ecological destruction on their children. Mothers know the cost of systemic racism. And mothers know the cost of poverty. Our next speaker is Amanda Shepard from Middlebury and the Vermont Worker Center. So come on up please Amanda. This is Amanda Shepard. I'm from Addison County. I'm a home care provider and I'm a mother. I have worked around Addison County and worked around the state of Vermont and worked with thousands of home care providers and their clients. And I have seen the needs around the world about America's war on the poor. Tens of millions of people like me aren't in poverty today and it didn't happen by accident. It's not because I'm too lazy or not willing to work. It's because of the choices made by politicians. Choices like blocking living wages, health care and public assistance. You can see the world doesn't meet their fundamental needs. That's right. For the right to stand together. And because politicians have worked multiple jobs and struggled to keep housing and to keep food for my children, struggled to have access to the education and maintain a living. What's happening to our communities is a crime. It's a crime to have this violence. It's a crime that our children, one out of every two children is living in poverty. That's right. Immoral. That's right. We're bringing attention to the... That's right. Every choice. Every one. Specialists. That's right. Dr. Kain knew what violence was just a few short weeks before she said that. Her husband had been gunned down in Memphis, Tennessee for standing up for the poor. In 1968, Dr. Kain said there are three evils that confront us. Poverty, racism, and militarism. That's right. We know today, ecological destruction is also one of those evils. That's right. That's what this campaign is going to address. One of the things we know is that we heard from some of our fellow brothers and sisters out in the poor community of Flint, Michigan. One lady said, I can go down to the gas station. I can buy a gala. Beth Ann Mayer. She's also worked, not only as a decadent in the church, but also as a pediatrician. She knows the health effects of a bad environment, but especially the health effects of poverty on children. Get my sign out here. Get your sign out here. Because poverty is violence. For those of you who still effects of poverty on children is violence to their brains. We know that the effects of racism on children as they grow, the daily onslaught of all the small messages they get and sometimes large messages they get is violence to their brains. And it puts them in very precarious health as they grow. Now, I belong to a church in which I'm ordained as a deacon and a deacon's job is to model servanthood. And my God says to me he very directly asks me, do you love me? And when I say yes, my God says to me, tend my lambs. And I'm here today to tend my lambs. In Vermont, we have 40% of our workforce is working for less than $15 an hour. That is a near poverty wage. When children grow up in those households they're living in an environment of incredible stress. And that stress leads to many ills. It leads to violence. It leads to substance use. It leads to disengagement. And all of those things are not good for our children. So I'm here today to make a noise, to raise it up. This is not business as usual. We cannot go on the way we have gone on. We have to step out of the box and realize that our future really depends on taking care of our children in a very real way. So I'm asking the governor not to veto the bills for family leave and the bill to raise the wage to $15. Put those bills on his desk. I hope the governor is listening. And I hope the rest of the state is listening. It's our children that we're here for. Thank you. Thank you very much. 40 million. Hard to put your mind around that. Did you know, Vermonters, who make less than $15 an hour? That's why the governor has decided to raise the wage bill. You're in Vermon, whose cancer, especially today holding in our hearts, all the women, all the children, all the disabled people, whose lives are crushed by poverty, by poverty wages, whose lives are shortened through environmental hazards, whose lives can't be what they can be because they spend so much money on the damn war economy, whose lives are often threatened through systemic racism. So I want to introduce our next speaker, Rabbi Shana Margulin. She's speaking for the Vermont Airfaith Action Clergy Caucus. So give it up for my great friend Rabbi Shana. She's a rabbi, but I also speak as a disabled person, as you see. And let me tell you, it is expensive to be disabled. Right now I can afford it. There are too many people who cannot. There's a story, dear, to Jews and Christians and Muslims that illustrates a universal truth. It's about the Pharaoh in Egypt who was afraid of a foreign people who were within his realm. He forgot the contributions that they had made, the contributions that actually saved his country. He only saw that they were becoming very numerous and they were becoming very powerful and he became afraid. And so he imposed harsh measures, work requirements, slavery. He took the fear of the other and became horrible to those people. Fear makes us mean. All of us become mean when we are afraid and there is a lot of fear right now being expressed in our public sphere. But we are asked not to respond to fear. We are asked to operate out of love. We are asked to love our neighbor as ourselves. We are taught over and over in all of our traditions. Over and over. For the people who need our help to care for the disadvantaged, to care for the orphan and the widow and the stranger, we are asked to care for the children. We are asked to welcome the stranger and make sure that she or he has what they need. We are asked to leave the corner of our fields unharvested because even though we planted and we sowed and we worked to make that crop come, even though we work at our jobs to make our income, it doesn't all belong to us. It belongs to everyone and it is the burden of society to make things equal. To remember that every person, every single person is created in the divine image. That every single person deserves dignity. That every single person deserves respect and care. What mean you that you grind the face of the poor, says the Prophet. What do we do? What are we supposed to do? And the Prophet Micah tells us you have heard what you must do. Do justice. Do justice. Make your society a fair one. Keep working for the dignity of every single person. Love mercy. Be kind. Don't forget that everyone that you meet is balancing on the narrow bridge of life. And walk humbly. Walk humbly. Remember that there is wisdom in everyone. Remember that we are all connected. Remember that we are all one. Let us go together for this 40 days and for the rest of our lives to remember, to serve, to know, to help, to create a moral society. That's right. On this second day of 40 days of action, we're going to come back next Monday for another Monday rally. If you're interested in participating with this, please see one of our peacekeepers, please see me after the rally, because we want to make this movement continue to build here in Vermont and across the country. We're coming together again on Tuesday, the 29th. That's going to be our truthful Tuesday. This is our moral Monday. We're going to be back on June 4th, June 11th, June 18th. Brothers and Brothers are going to join together from Vermont, Connecticut, Wisconsin, Kansas, Little Rock, Arkansas, going to Washington, D.C. for June 23rd. That's where this Poor People's Campaign, a national call for moral revival is going to go. As we come here, though, we don't maybe have the biggest crowd of all of the state-owned crowds in the 37 other states. We're a small little state, right? We got the prettiest rally. When we say that we're out here for the Poor People's Campaign, it's not just for survival. It's to live. And if you want to live, you've got to have art. You've got to have it responsible for making a lot of this art happen. First of all, just take a moment to think about all of the protesters in Palestine, in occupied Palestine who have been murdered by the Israeli government for violent protests just like we are doing here today. So let's just take a moment. Thank you. So, I'm Lindsay Love and I'm with the MAKE which is a Direct Action Arts Collective and we have been coordinating all the art for the Poor People's Campaign. And I'm here to say that we aren't just here to survive. We're here to thrive. And one of the ways we do that or two of the ways we do that is through art and also through community. And pulling those two things together can be very powerful. Politics often lives in the realm of the logical and analytical while art often lives in the emotional and creative space. This portrait of Ella Baker is a direct response to combining those two realms. How many of you know what Ella Baker was? Ella Baker was the long-term lead strategist for the civil rights movement. And when you ask people about the civil rights movement you often hear about a few strong other leaders, right? Ella Baker said we don't need strong leaders. She said she believed in participatory democracy as a key component to real and meaningful change. That means every single person who's here and everyone who's not being involved whether you are making art making food or making revolution keep doing it. Everyone to lead. We honor Ella Baker and her legacy of participatory democracy and the leadership of all brilliant women of color. Thank you. We're joining in Fusion Movement Solidarity Fusion with 37 other states at the State Capitol. The Reverend Dr. William Barber from North Carolina started the Morrill Mondays movement a few years ago. 16 people and Reverend Barber went to the Raleigh State House in North Carolina and said we're not going to take it anymore. They sat down and got arrested to make sure that we had to have a new moral narrative for North Carolina. Along with Reverend Dr. Listea Harris we're taking this all throughout the country. We gather here today especially keeping in our hearts in our minds in our souls the children the women, the disabled. Now I don't know about you but I think the people who love children best are our teachers. I know the muggers and fathers love them because we got to but the teachers they have to go in day after day for our children. Our teachers have been leading the way. We've seen them get out in state houses in Charleston, West Virginia. Now seven state capitals learning from the teachers. That's right, that's what we got to do. Learning from the teachers. We come to the State Capitol because as Reverend Barber says this is where the damage gets done. This is where the damage gets done. But we also know the pain is being felt in Middlebury, in Rundland in Barry, in St. Johnsbury all throughout this state. On June 16th we're going to go up to St. Johnsbury and in St. Johnsbury we're going to have a Medicaid March because that's where the pain gets done from the damage that gets felt from the pain that gets done right here in Montpelio. So what we're doing is this moral fusion action. In a few minutes we're going to get ready because we're going to go to the streets. Whose streets? Witnesses who are going to go down and take this street. And then in subsequent weeks as we come back, whose house? Take back our house too. So start getting prepared to think about moving down to the streets with us. So right now we're going to have music. Some of the music is the most important thing. Like Lindsey was talking about. It's his art, this culture this music that gives our souls life. We're about life because we know poverty is immoral, systemic racism is immoral, the war economy is immoral. Let's have a little music to lift up our spirits. The solidarity singer is going to come up. Somebody is going to start my sister. Okay, this is a good song. If you know this song, sing along. And if you don't know this song sing along. People are sisters and brothers of a campaign. As the poor people's campaign a national call for moral revival. In our 40 days of moral here in Vermont, homeless people in Vermont, old parent families find it impossible to make ends meet by the end of the month here in Vermont. Did you know somebody's been hurting my sister? And it's been going on far too long. And we won't be silent. And we're not going to be silent. We're taking the street. We're taking the state house later. We're coming out here with that soul force we have. Nonviolent moral fusion direct action. All of us together now my sisters and brothers it is my great pleasure to introduce the the tri-chair of the poor people's campaign of Vermont Mark Hughes the executive director of justice for all. Give it up for mom. Now listen. First, let's get this straight. Okay? This is not a celebration. No. Okay? This is not a commemoration. That's right. That's right. What we're doing here is a continuation. Yeah, that's right. This is not meant to make you feel good today. We didn't come here to give you a whole lot of good news if you've been listening to the numbers. Okay? We have a lot of empirical data and we have a lot of anecdotal data and we put those things together they do not leave a good message for us as a nation or state. What we're here to do is is to change a moral narrative of a nation today starting in our hearts expanding to our families and friends and across this state that we would impact a nation. How many people believe that? So what we came but I stopped by to tell you is just to piggyback on my brother Earl's message about about this whole idea of freedom. Okay? And some of this involves moral courage. There are many people here who have far too much to lose. Oh, you didn't come to hear this. But there are many people here who have far too much to lose and it makes your decisions very difficult. But there are some of us who have nothing to lose. Right? But our change. There are some of us who come prepared to put our bodies on the line today. Okay? There are some of us who will continue to come and place our bodies on the line every day. There are some of us who get up every morning and place our bodies on the line. So what I came to tell you today is is we have nothing to lose. We have nothing to lose. We have nothing to lose but our change. And that is where our freedom comes from. And let me tell you when we put that together and as we begin to link arms and as we begin to come together and share in our truths and hold each other close together what happens is that strength that power becomes freedom. What happens is our collective courage. Our collective ability to risk everything because we've got nothing to lose but our change nullifies everything that would stand against us. Oh, I wish I had a witness today. So what I'm trying to get at here is that there are some of you who've come today and I know that it may have been for a show and that's okay and I hope it turns into something else. This is not a splash in the pan let me tell you something there are 37 maybe 40 other states across the United States. I know you've heard this but there are also within our own United States capital what you're experiencing right now you may look around right now and say well we're small in number but I came to tell you that we have already far exceeded anything that's ever been done in this nation right now. So what I came by to let you know is just a couple things is that there is a nation that is crying right now there are people even amongst us right now to include myself we are crying right now we are dying right now it is a shame when you can take $650 billion and invest it in a so called military or defense or something like that and you got folks sitting around trying to figure out who gives health care it's a shame it's a shame it's immoral it's immoral it's a shame to live to be in a state where one in 14 African-American males like me like you are arrested and incarcerated held in this state it is a shame I said it's a shame and you know what we lead the nation there is no other state in this nation that incarcerates more African-American males than this state one in 14 a shame it's a shame when we have a military industrial complex that creates weapons and surveillance systems takes them around the world uses them on black and brown and pour people around the world and then trickles it down into our own nation across our national garden local and state police forces to flood over into our own prison industrial complex to use again on black and brown and pour people to incarcerate and to enslave and to survey them it is a shame you should say that we can do better this campaign when we start talking about the moral fusion and I'm almost done when we start talking about the moral fusion of this campaign I want you to realize what it is that we're talking about because the same fight when we start talking about the fight for clean water we don't even have clean water for everybody in our own state do we? the same fight for environmental justice the same fight for our LGBTQIA community the same fight for racial justice for fair pay for equal pay the same fight for livable wages the same fight for affordable housing the same fight for every single one of these policies are undercurted with one fact is that we have an immoral system that is passing immoral policies that is oppressing people by design and creating poverty for this nation it ain't no accident many events that we have prepared this is not a show for those who came for a show the theater is the block that way okay and we didn't come to play and we didn't come to have a good time there are people that are hurting folks okay there are some people who have nothing to lose but they're changed today and the rest of us that doesn't exempt us though because you still, you even if you have more to lose you have a moral responsibility and because you have something to lose then you have something to offer and you have something to sacrifice so I came to say to you today lay it down and that's what we're here to do today what you're going to see throughout the week is that there will be a number of activities that are going on leading right back up to where you stand today you should go to the facebook facebook page of the poor people's campaign national call for a more revival for Vermont and find out what those events are you should go to the website and you should find out what those events are and you should strongly consider plugging yourself in and if you feel like you're not in a point to where you don't have anything to lose today then I'll see you tomorrow but we'll be right here thank you if we can have it, shut it down and really inspire us lift us up as we start to move into action in a few minutes that's where we're going during the singing I'd like all of our moral witnesses to please come forward up here behind the podium all of the moral witnesses please join me up here behind the podium so Avery and the solidarity singers are going to give us a little more music to inspire us for a minute moral witnesses moral witnesses this is a song that's really about commitment when your mind is made up and what you're going to do when your mind is made up my mind the First Amendment writes that we don't want people to go around the south side of State Street in front of the DMV some of us will stay here on the north side on the capital side of State Street and then our moral witnesses are going to take the crosswalk