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[Congressional Bills 110th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Con. Res. 161 Introduced in House (IH)]

110th CONGRESS
  1st Session
H. CON. RES. 161

Commemorating the 40th Anniversary of Dr. King's Launching of the Poor 
     People's Campaign and Organization of the Poor People's Army.

_______________________________________________________________________

                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                              May 24, 2007

Ms. Lee (for herself, Mr. Stark, Mr. Meek of Florida, Mr. Ellison, Mr. 
Lewis of Georgia, Ms. Eddie Bernice Johnson of Texas, Mr. Grijalva, Mr. 
Payne, Ms. Corrine Brown of Florida, Mr. Conyers, Mr. Butterfield, Mr. 
   Honda, Ms. Kilpatrick, Mr. Serrano, Ms. Jackson-Lee of Texas, Mr. 
   McDermott, Mr. Nadler, Mr. Rangel, Mr. Cohen, Ms. Schakowsky, Mr. 
Kucinich, Mr. Baca, Mr. Scott of Virginia, Mr. Towns, Ms. Woolsey, Mr. 
 Hastings of Florida, and Mr. Watt) submitted the following concurrent 
   resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Oversight and 
                           Government Reform

_______________________________________________________________________

                         CONCURRENT RESOLUTION

 
Commemorating the 40th Anniversary of Dr. King's Launching of the Poor 
     People's Campaign and Organization of the Poor People's Army.

Whereas Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. raised the possibility of a poor people's 
        alliance as early as 1964;
Whereas Dr. King advocated such an alliance in his book entitled Where Do We Go 
        From Here? Chaos or Community published in January, 1967, and often 
        spoke of the need to confront the class and racial basis of economic 
        discrimination;
Whereas America was at war and very polarized during the summer of 1967 and 
        racked by social and economic injustice and civil strife;
Whereas Dr. King sought to overcome widespread national despair during 1967 and 
        called for ``transmuting the deep rage of the ghetto into a constructive 
        and creative force'';
Whereas in the middle of August, 1967, Dr. King first revealed his new 
        organizing vision to his aides in the Southern Christian Leadership 
        Conference (SCLC) for a nonviolent campaign of mass civil disobedience 
        in the national capital itself to dramatize the need for jobs and 
        economic advancement for the poor;
Whereas Dr. King planned to bring thousands of unemployed Americans to 
        Washington, DC, to camp out in front of government buildings for an 
        extended period like the Bonus Marchers of 1932 in order ``to cripple 
        the operations of an oppressive society'' until it listened at last to 
        the cries of its poor;
Whereas in mid-November, 1967, at an SCLC retreat, Dr. King informed his closest 
        advisors that ``we are going to take this movement and we are going to 
        reach out to the poor people in all directions in this country. We're 
        going into the Southwest after the Indians, into the West after the 
        Chicanos, into Appalachia after the poor whites, and into the ghettoes 
        after Negroes and Puerto Ricans. And we're going to bring them together 
        and enlarge this campaign into something bigger than just a civil-rights 
        movement for Negroes'';
Whereas he traveled nationwide throughout the fall of 1967 to raise funds for 
        the poor people's campaign, which he called his ``last and greatest 
        dream'';
Whereas Dr. King held a national news conference at Ebenezer Baptist Church in 
        Atlanta on December 4th, 1967 to unveil this new campaign, remind the 
        press that the government ``does not move to correct the problems 
        involving race until it is confronted directly and dramatically'', 
        detail the SCLC's plan to recruit 3,000 poor people from five rural 
        areas and ten major cities, train them for three months in the 
        techniques of nonviolence, and then bring them to Washington, DC to 
        disrupt government operations until America responded to the needs of 
        her poor;
Whereas J. Edgar Hoover and other top-ranking FBI officials actively sought to 
        sabotage the poor people's campaign, using 44 field officers to stir up 
        public indignation against it and for the first time specifically 
        targeted Dr. King in the FBI's COINTELPRO activities against ``black 
        nationalist hate groups'';
Whereas the announcement of the poor people's campaign markedly increased 
        assassination threats against Dr. King and precipitated the issuance of 
        what has now been documented as specific contracts upon his life;
Whereas SCLC leaders officially approved the poor people's campaign in January, 
        1968;
Whereas in January, 1968, Bernard Lafayette was named to direct the poor 
        people's campaign and forty veteran SCLC field workers were dispatched 
        to selected rural areas in the South and to Baltimore, Philadelphia, 
        Newark, New York, Boston, Cleveland, Detroit, and other riot-plagued 
        cities to start recruiting volunteers to establish a poor people's 
        ``tent'' city in Washington, DC;
Whereas several thousand poor people in the first phase of the campaign were 
        supposed to march into Washington, DC as a poor people's army in late 
        April, 1968, and encamp in a plainly visible shantytown;
Whereas the poor people's campaign was designed to mobilize the nation to mount 
        a full-scale, nonviolent assault on poverty through at least three 
        months of unrelenting pressure on Congress for action during the summer 
        of 1968 and spotlighting for the entire nation the paradox of ``poverty 
        amid plenty'' and the miserable realities of America's poor;
Whereas Dr. King described the purpose of the poor people's campaign to be ``to 
        dramatize the gulf between promise and fulfillment, to call attention to 
        the gap between the dream and the realities, to make the invisible 
        visible'';
Whereas Dr. King was murdered on April 4, 1968, while in Memphis marching in 
        support of striking sanitation workers, thus depriving the poor people's 
        campaign its principal organizer and felling the drum major of the poor 
        people's army before it could march to our Nation's Capital;
Whereas 40 years later, 1 in 8 Americans now lives in poverty;
Whereas poverty in America now is far higher than in many other developed 
        nations, as evidenced by the fact that the United States ranks 24th 
        among 25 countries when measuring the share of the population below 50 
        percent of median income; and
Whereas inequality has reached record highs in America, wherein one percent of 
        Americans in 2005 had the largest share of the nation's income (19 
        percent) since 1929 and, at the same time, 20 percent of Americans have 
        only 3.4 percent of the Nation's income: Now, therefore, be it
    Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring),  
That--
            (1) the President and Congress should reaffirm the Federal 
        commitment to eradicate poverty in America as a leading 
        national priority; and
            (2) the President and Congress should establish immediately 
        a national goal of cutting poverty in half in the next 10 years 
        and adopt a national strategy to reach that goal.
                                 <all>
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