Press release from the North Carolina Poor People’s Campaign:
The North Carolina Poor People’s Campaign will launch the state’s leg of the National Emergency Poverty and Truth Bus Tour on Saturday, April 27, in Asheville, NC. North Carolina is one of 28 states participating in the national Poor People’s Campaign’s organizing tour, a push to highlight the urgent crises facing the nation’s 140 million poor and low-income people and hold accountable the officials and electeds who perpetuate policy violence against vulnerable communities.
The National Emergency Truth and Poverty Bus Tour comes amidst a barrage of attacks on the poor from Washington and states across the country, including attempts by the president to divert critical funds away from social safety net programs toward the military and the border wall. It marks the next phase of the campaign’s nationwide efforts to highlight the real emergencies of poverty, systemic racism, ecological devastation, militarism and our distorted moral narrative; build power in often overlooked and underserved communities; and impact policies and elections.
The North Carolina tour will visit Asheville, Charlotte, Greensboro, Sanford, Red Springs, Warsaw, Durham and Raleigh. Local stops are designed to shine a light on injustices facing poor Carolinians. In North Carolina about 9,000 people are homeless. Working at the state minimum wage, it takes 87 hours of work per week to afford a 2-bedroom apartment. Two million workers make under 15 dollars an hour—49.7 percent of North Carolina’s workforce. Of the 35,697 people imprisoned, about 61 percent are people of color. Black residents are incarcerated at over four times the rate of White residents.
Over five days we will visit 8 locations to bring attention to the real national emergencies that are taking place across North Carolina every day. We will host town halls and marches with the local communities as well as private testimonies and driving tours of impacted neighborhoods. We will also be building momentum to May 1, International Labor Day, where we will be in partnership with the North Carolina Association of Educators in Raleigh.
The national bus tour launched March 23 in Charleston, SC on the 50th anniversary of the historic Charleston hospital strike. Throughout the tour, organizers will sign up poor people, clergy, and activists for a June Poor People’s Moral Action Congress in Washington, DC.
APRIL 27, 10 a.m., Asheville, NC: Organizers in Western North Carolina will host a town hall to discuss the links between health and poverty and meet with street medics, mental health providers, and people with lived experiences of homelessness and inability to receive health care. Location: Haywood Street Congregation, at the corner of Patton Avenue, 297 Haywood St, Asheville, NC 28801.
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