The Poor People’s Campaign was a march on Washington D.C. to gain economic justice for poor people in the United States that began on this day in 1968, just one month after the assassination of one of its key organizers, MLK Jr.

The protest was also organized by Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and carried out under the leadership of Ralph Abernathy in the wake of King’s assassination.

After presenting an organized set of demands to Congress and executive agencies, participants set up a 3,000-person protest camp on the Washington Mall, where they stayed for six weeks in the spring of 1968.

Among those demands was a proposal for an “economic bill of rights” that included a commitment to full employment, a guaranteed annual income measure, and more low-income housing for poor Americans of all races.

"I think it is necessary for us to realize that we have moved from the era of civil rights to the era of human rights…

When we see that there must be a radical redistribution of economic and political power, then we see that for the last twelve years we have been in a reform movement…

That after Selma and the Voting Rights Bill, we moved into a new era, which must be an era of revolution…"

-MLK Jr., in a 1967 planning meeting

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      • CthulhusIntern [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        11 hours ago

        Not well. Feel really lead on. Like, the recruiter called me on Friday to give me an update, there was just me and one other person, told me that I was the first choice of the first people I interviewed, made it sound like it was in the bag. They just needed to interview that other person. But then, pretty much the only reason was they picked the other person was more years of experience. Why did they waste my time like that if they were just going to pick based on years of experience?