Systemic poverty, systemic racism, militarism and the war economy, ecological devastation, and the false moral narrative of religious nationalism — these are the interlocking evils that the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival is determined to overcome. Its goal is to build a truly just society based on the principle that everybody has a right to live and to thrive, as our deepest religious traditions and our most cherished constitutional documents demand.

We are a growing national movement with robust branches both here in Maine (www.facebook.com/maineppc/) and around the country. And we are steadily and joyfully building the power together to do the work we have before us.

The time for this movement for justice is now.

As Rabbi Joshua Chasan observed recently, “The powerful spirit of the campaign grows out of the leadership of people directly affected by injustice,” and “in nonviolently transcending what divides us, the campaign shifts the moral narrative, away from scolding people affected by injustice, to embracing them in their need.”

And as the Rev. Christina Sillari explains, the Poor People’s Campaign seeks to “dismantle the systems of oppression and violence our country uses to disempower us and pit us against one another.” It is a nonviolent revolution “of the soul of humanity” that “understands the intersectionality of our enslavement and offers us a path to become free.”

On Oct. 10, the national leadership will be in Portland for the third stop on their “We Must do MORE (mobilizing, organizing, registering, and educating) Tour” across the country. At 5:45 p.m. we will gather at Lincoln Park and march down Congress Street to First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church for a mass meeting. All are welcome, and we hope you will join us.

For more information please contact [email protected].

Elizabeth Leonard

Waterville