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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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558 comments

  • I finished blackshirts and reds in full!

    US car culture is an ideology manufactured by the capitalist class who are shielded from its negative externalities.

    The former USSR had a lot of brainworms about what capitalism was like.

    ABC (anything but class) performative progressivism that gets outflanked by neo-cons and Donald Trump who use class rhetoric to their own ends.

    The illegal dissolution of the USSR was one of the worst disasters in human history. Millions perished as the social safety net provided by socialism was carved up while communists of all stripes were persecuted.

    This is part of my new summer goal to read theory by touching grass (audio books). I hope to be down Cowbee's list by the end of summer and some more as well as produce writings of my own from it on how class and capital relations intersect with the field of computer science and engineering.

    Next up: Georges Politzer’s Elementary Principles of Philosophy.

    • US car culture is an ideology manufactured by the capitalist class who are shielded from its negative externalities.

      It killed me inside when he talked about how the people in the GDR had well funded public transportation, and yet they still yearned for more cars

      • The communist wonderland section made me so incredibly melancholic.

        Why would you ever desire to be in capitalism? Is there something about the capitalist system that is evenly remotely appealing?

        • I've have this same experience in a few of the times I've interacted with Chinese people on rednote. There are times were there just seems to be this naivety about capitalism and it not being as brutal as it really is. Like they've been shielded from the worst of it and just don't believe how bad it can actually get

        • The worst people you know's sole desire in life is to be obscenely rich

        • the image of infinite treats that was promoted by propaganda outlets (radio free europe etc.) did a lot of damage

    • Ay, thanks for the shout-out! Just happy to hear people are using it, haha. Great job so far! Blackshirts and Reds is such an effective work for how short it is.

    • I read all the what you learned paragraphs in Parenti's voice and it worked really well! If I'm trying to speak emphatically I've come to imitate the guy.

558 comments