Poor People's Campaign
Floor Speech
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Ms. MOORE. Mr. Speaker, as you mentioned, the Poor People's Campaign was a national call for a moral revival.
What we are doing here now: We are reengaging the Poor People's Campaign for the nonviolent economic reform movement that the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King was organizing when he was assassinated in 1968.
This resurgence is being called the most extensive wave of nonviolent direct action in our Nation's history. What this resurgence recognizes is that Dr. King was right, that the trifecta of racism, poverty, and militarism are interconnected. Today they are trapping more than 140 million Americans in poverty and low wealth, and many of them are children and veterans.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to talk to you about one of Dr. King's triple evils, militarism. I want to talk about it because we have a total volunteer Army now. We don't have the draft. So the young people who are being recruited into our military today are young people, often from low-income households, who are seeking an opportunity, and they are being seduced into the military with promises of technical training, bonuses, and college.
I would like to share with you a letter from one of those people, Mr. Brock McIntosh of Illinois. He says:
This way of injecting the poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people, normally humane, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love.
I would like to tell you all about the precise moment I realized that there was poison in me. I am the child of a nurse and a factory worker in the heartland of Illinois, the family of blue collar and service workers.
At the height of the Iraq war, military recruiters at my high school attracted me with signup bonuses and college assistance that some saw as their ticket out. For me, I hoped it was my ticket up, providing opportunities that I once felt were out of reach.
Two years later, when I was 20 years old, I was standing over the body of a 16-year-old Afghan boy. A roadside bomb he was building prematurely detonated. He was covered in shrapnel and burns and now lay sedated after having one of his hands amputated by our medics. His other hand had the callused roughness of a farmer or a shepherd.
As he lay there with a peaceful expression, I studied the details of his face and caught myself rooting for him: ``If this boy knew me,'' I thought, ``he wouldn't want to kill me.'' And here I am, I am supposed to want to kill him, and I feel bad that I wanted him to live.
Now, that is the poisoned mind. That is the militarized mind. And all the opportunities afforded me by the military can't repay the cost of war on my soul.
It is poor folks who carry the burden of war for the elites who send them. A working-class boy from Illinois, sent halfway around the world to kill a young farmer--how did we get here? How did this crazy war economy come to be?
First, there is the demand. A society that feels perpetually threatened perpetually prepares for war, even in the time of peace. To do this requires a military industrial complex, a vast war economy whose charters, profits, stocks, and jobs depend on permanent militarization and whose fortune prospers most in times of war.
Secondly, there is the supply. A Nation that wants to attract volunteers to its military and care for veterans provides opportunities that will lure recruits who are predominantly working-class folks with limited opportunities.
We need a Poor People's Campaign to amplify the voices like this, of regular folks, above the lobby of a militarized industry, a poisoned economy, to demand jobs in industries other than war-making, to demand opportunities for working- class folks that don't require killing other working-class folks.
We need a Poor People's Campaign to demand justice for people of color, killed by militarized police forces, a poisoned law enforcement.
We need a Poor People's Campaign to transform a militarized politic, a poisoned Congress, and a poisoned White House that proves their toughness with chest beating and unites their base with war drumming.
War always has a way of distracting our attention and perverting our priorities. We need a Poor People's Campaign to organize for racial, economic, and ecological justice, to force these issues to the front and rectify our Nation's agenda.
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