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www.nashvillecitypaper.com/index.cfm?section_id=9&screen=news&news_id=25325
Poor People find voice
By Megan Moriarty, mmoriarty@nashvillecitypaper.com
August 05, 2003
The Historic Poor People?s March will make its way through Nashville this week, continuing the efforts of Dr. Martin Luther King and his vision of true equality.
Organized by Philadelphia-based Kensington Welfare Rights Union, the event will commemorate the 1968 march on our nation?s capitol.
?What we hope to do is draw attention to the real terrorism in America, which is that we have men, women and children going hungry, people without healthcare and people left without any place to live,? said Kensington Welfare Rights Union Director Cheri Honkala. ?The poor people in America can?t survive another Bush Administration.?
The 2003 Poor People?s March began Aug. 2 in Marks, Miss., and will conclude Aug. 22 in Washington, DC. Marchers will walk and caravan through seven Southern states on the way to their final destination. Nashville will be the second stop on the march.
Participants heading towards Washington will arrive at Nolensville Road and Thompson Lane around noon Tuesday where they will join hundreds of local individuals for the 20-mile walk through the city.
Nashville Peace and Justice Center Director Matt Leber said the first leg of the Nashville march, will conclude later that day at Legislative Plaza, where people will sleep overnight.
The event will pick up again Wednesday morning with marchers going through North Nashville?s Jefferson Street, a historic hot spot during the civil rights movement.
?Speaking truth to power is as needed today as it ever was during Dr. King?s Era,? Leber said. ?As our government misleads its people about the war in Iraq, billions of American dollars a day are wasted in Iraq while American schools crumble and unemployment thrives.?
Upon arriving in Washington D.C. marchers will participate in ?Tent City,? a week-long encampment, in which individuals will learn and speak out on issues such as economic human rights violations of food, clothing, housing, education, living wages and healthcare.
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and King launched the Poor People?s Campaign, a movement to broadly address economic problems of poor people of all races, in November 1967.
The following year he announced the Poor People?s Campaign would march on Washington and demand an ?Economic Bill of Rights? that would provide for employment of all able-bodied individuals, as well as a living income for the disabled and an end to housing discrimination.
King was on his way to Mississippi when he stopped in Memphis to march in support of the sanitation worker?s strike. He was assassinated on April 4, 1968. While he never was able to see his efforts come to fruition, the march went on with the urging of his family and the SCLC.
Failing to gain the necessary support, however, the campaign closed camp on June 19, 1968.
For more information on the Nashville portion of the march, contact the Nashville Peace and Justice Center at 321-9066. Additional information about the 2003 Poor People?s March is available at www.kwru.org.