Poor-Led People’s Campaign Marches To Resurrect Resurrection City

Above photo: Poor People’s Economic and Human Rights Campaign Facebook Page.

For the 50th Anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Poor People’s Campaign and Resurrection City, poor and houseless people marched from the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia to Washington, DC where they are setting up a Resurrection City in DuPont Circle. We speak with Tiny (aka Lisa Gray-Garcia), co-founder of POOR Magazine and a participant on the march, about the reality of poverty in the United States. Tiny describes the march and the intersections between poverty and many other areas such as mass incarceration, health and colonization. This is a poor-led people’s campaign that is not only resisting the policies and systems that drive the current crises, but is also putting forth poor people-led solutions, such as the Bank of Community Reparations and Homefulness.

Listen here:

In the news:

HUD Plan Would Raise Rents for Poor

Housing Prices Rise at Twice the Speed of Inflation and Pay

Conspiracy Builds to Force Assange Out of Ecuadorian Embassy

Statement of Unity for US-North Korea Summit

Judge Slams Family Separation as Brutal, Offensive

Activists Blockade, Call for Abolition of ICE

No Bayou Bridge Pipeline

Relevant articles and websites:

Lisa “Tiny” Gray Garcia

POOR Magazine

Poor News Network

Poor People’s Economic and Human Rights Campaign

Guest:

Tiny (aka Lisa Gray-Garcia) is a formerly unhoused, incarcerated poverty scholar, revolutionary journalist, lecturer, poet, visionary, teacher and single mama of Tiburcio, daughter of a houseless, disabled mama Dee, and the co–founder of POOR Magazine/Prensa POBRE/PoorNewsNetwork. With her Mama Dee- she co-founded Escuela de la gente/PeopleSkool- a poor and indigenous people-led skool, as well as several cultural projects such as the Po Poets Project/Poetas POBREs Proyecto (co-founded with Leroy Moore), welfareQUEENs, the Theatre of the POOR/Teatro de los pobres, Hotel Voices( to name a few. She is also the author of Criminal of Poverty: Growing Up Homeless in America, co-editor of A Decolonizers Guide to A Humble Revolution, Born & Raised in Frisco and her second book- Poverty ScholarShip -Poor People Theory, Arts, words and Tears Across Mama Earth A PeoplesTeXt will be released in 2018-19. In 2011 she co-launched The Homefulness Project – a landless peoples, self-determined land liberation movement in the Ohlone/Lisjan/Huchuin territory known as Deep East Oakland, ,and co-founded a liberation school for children, Deecolonize Academy

In 2016 tiny launched the Stolen Land/Hoarded Resources Tours Through Turtle Island  with 1st Nations leaders and fellow poverty scholars where poor people tour “rich” neighborhoods across the US and knock on doors humbly asking that wealth hoarders redistribute their hoarded money and assets, The tour is loosely based on the Bhoodan Movement of India launched by Vinoba Bhave who walked through India asking wealthy “land-owners” to gift their land to landless peoples.