National Poor People’s Campaign takes root in Montana

Taking action to support causes she values has always been a big part of Hannah Hernandez’s life. Hernandez, a Polson resident, has worked in a variety of fields, from a forest hydrologist advocating for the rights of streams, to teaching mindfulness meditation, to baking bread and pastries. Through it all, she has advocated for policies that help protect people and natural resources.

Her interest was piqued when she learned of the National Poor People’s Campaign. The campaign originated in 1967 with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and others calling for a “revolution of values” in America. They sought to build a broad movement fusing a variety of organizations, causes, groups and people around a shared vision for America to end poverty, discrimination and ecological devastation. At the time, 50 million Americans were considered to live in poverty. When King was assassinated, the movement lost not only a leader, but momentum.

In 2018, with the count of Americans in poverty now exceeding 140 million, the movement was reborn as “Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival,” led by the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber III and the Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis.

Following up on her interest in the national movement, Hernandez found that a state-level group, Montana Poor People’s Campaign (MTPPC), launched last year. She quickly signed up to help.

“We’re working to build a steering committee that is representative of Montana,” Hernandez said. “Urban, rural, across the spectrum of anyone who has experienced or suffered repercussions from poverty or racism, environmental injustice, military industrialism or religious nationalism, or is working in the field to end these injustices, and bringing them together to create a movement in the state.” The movement is non-partisan, she said, and includes members of diverse experience and political backgrounds.

In June, a group of MTPPC workers gathered at the office of U.S. Rep. Matt Rosendale in support of a congressional resolution, "A Third Reconstruction: Fully Addressing Poverty and Low Wages from the Ground Up." The resolution includes the premise that “policies that center [on] the 140 million poor and low-income people in the country are also good economic policies that can heal and transform the nation.”

Montanans have visited Washington, D.C., to pressure Sens. Jon Tester and Steve Daines to support the rights of poor people as well, Hernandez said. They called for a plan to end poverty and racism. The “Third Reconstruction,” a resolution in Congress, is billed as “A revival of our constitutional commitment to establish justice and provide for the general welfare …”

Pressure is building at the state level for similar priorities, with laws and budgets to “ensure that the abundance we live in is marshalled toward the needs and priorities of the poor, ” with “equity, liberty and justice for all.”

Hernandez cited the book “Doughnut Economics— Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist,” which explains that resources do exist to sustainably provide for all, within the limits of the planet.

Hernandez said the Montana group is headed by three “tri-chairs” and the steering committee to ensure the movement is following working toward the tenets and principles of the national Poor People’s Campaign, which recognizes the poor not only as victims of injustice, but “agents of profound social change” when their voices come together.

“It’s about getting people aware that it is a moral imperative that we actually care for and lift up people who have been marginalized by systems,” by changing those systems, Hernandez said.

“Awareness in conjunction with direct action events can empower people to become a participant in creating this moral change in our state and our country, and bring direct action to our congressional and state legislative representatives that they have a moral imperative to represent poor people,” Hernandez said.

“We are here to change how our country operates by changing the moral narrative,” she said. “It starts at the bottom.”

For more information, call Hannah Hernandez at 406-638-1149, or visit the campaign’s Facebook page or poorpeoplescampaign.org/committee/Montana.