Group fighting poverty and racism to visit Aberdeen Tuesday

By Louis Krauss • April 30, 2018 2:01 pm

To wrap up a nationwide tour of communities dealing with poverty and homelessness, the Rev. Dr. William Barber II, co-chair of a poverty-awareness effort called the Poor People’s Campaign, will be in Aberdeen Tuesday to visit the homeless camps along the Chehalis River and speak at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church.

Barber is a minister who lives in North Carolina and he is on the national board of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

The tour for the Poor People’s Campaign began in early December 2017, and is a revival of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1968 campaign of the same name that intended to gain economic justice for poor people in the United States. The original movement did not get off the ground due to King’s assassination later that same year.

Aberdeen was chosen as their last stop after being invited by members of Chaplains on the Harbor.

After visiting Aberdeen homeless camps on a tour led by Chaplains on the Harbor, Barber and local community organizers will hold a meeting with testimony from Barber, activists and local homeless people at 11:30 a.m. at St. Andrew’s. The church is located at 400 E. First St. in Aberdeen and members of the public are welcome.

The campaign’s other co-chair Rev. Liz Theoharis, from New York, said a goal of this tour is to bring attention to the stories and harsh realities that many poor people around the country live in, and then unite communities around improving them.

“A lot of what this tour is, is getting this country to kind of weep and pay attention, to stop in its tracks to see what’s really happening, and how people are living,” said Theoharis. “Whether it’s in homeless encampments of Aberdeen, or Lowndes County, Alabama, where people are living with raw sewage in their yards, it’s to get people paying attention to that.”

So far, Barber, and fellow co-chair Rev. Liz Theoharis, from New York, have traveled to Lowndes County, AL; Detroit and Highland Park, MI.; Harlan County, KY; and South Charleston, WV. The tour kicked off in February with a gathering of antipoverty activists in Marks, Miss., the town that inspired King to launch the first Poor People’s Campaign.