At our Winter Retreat at Chestnut Hill Friends Meeting on January 3-5, 2019, the Young Adult Friends community created and approved the following minute in support of the Poor Peoples Campaign.
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Young Adult Friends support the 2020 Poor People’s Campaign: a National Call for Moral Revival (PPC). There are several principles of the campaign that speak to us. We realize that there is a right way and a wrong way to lead in religious communities, we know what side we’re on and we are excited to shift the moral narrative promoted by the religious right. We agree and recognize that everyone has the right to live a life not in economic and environmental turmoil, but in equitable communities. We are in the spirit of realizing the Peaceable Kingdom is here on Earth and by supporting the PPC we keep the choice to stand in solidarity with communities and to keep our morals.
Stephen Cary of AFSC remarked in 1968 that the PPC “…has made poverty in America visible, and never again will it be possible to pretend that it is not real.” As a community we recognize that we need to continue to make poverty, and all the injustices that cause it, visible. We are excited to continue this work as the AFSC organizer is hired. Specifically, we will work to bring representation to the actions occurring in Philadelphia, and will work to bus people to the march in Washington, DC in June 2020.
Some more information on the campaign:
- The Fundamental Principles of the PPC
- Moral Agenda, the demands of the movement
- A Call for a Moral Revival – TED Talk, Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis at TEDWomen 2018
