This Thanksgiving, a day already marked by many Indigenous peoples as a Day of Mourning, families across the country will remember and mourn the loss of loved ones who have died from COVID-19 and poverty. Millions of poor and low-income households also face mounting bills, evictions and hunger, after months of unemployment, cuts in wages, and the government’s failure to pass a comprehensive COVID-relief package.

The COVID-19 crisis feeds on the fissures of inequality already felt by the 140 million people who were living in poverty before the pandemic, or who were one emergency away from poverty.

We have passed 250,000 deaths, millions remain without health care, 30 million workers have lost their jobs or significant hours of work, and nearly every state is facing sharp drops in revenue that will threaten even more cuts to essential social programs and jobs. The U.S. economy remains deeply depressed and as Federal Reserve Chair Powell warns, may never return to “normal” -- the greatest impact of further economic shifts will be on low-wage workers and others deemed “essential,” but who are still unable to afford all the essentials of life.

Ending the suffering of our families and communities is a moral mandate to all who are tasked with governance now and in the new year. Calls for cooperation cannot compromise with injustice.

Our political leaders must reject a politics of austerity and meet their commitment to visionary policies that address human needs and cultivate human capacities. They must overcome the divisions caused by hunger, poverty and racism in the richest country in the world. America must direct its resources and creativity towards the poor and dispossessed rather than lobbyists, insurance companies, financial institutions, pharmaceutical companies, and wealthy corporations.

We need a comprehensive moral policy agenda [bit.ly/ppcjubilee] that establishes justice, promotes the general welfare, builds strong social programs that lift society from below and focuses on the interlocking injustices of systemic racism, poverty, the war economy, ecological devastation and a distorted moral narrative of religious nationalism.

This means prioritizing universal health care, workers' rights and wages including a $15 minimum wage, sustained full employment, unemployment insurance, expanding voting rights and reversing chronic racial and economic inequality faced by millions of Americans.

In fact, we know that moral policy = good economics, because when we lift from the bottom, everybody rises. [https://bit.ly/moralpolicy-goodeconomics]

On November 23 at 2:30pm ET, the Poor People’s Campaign will organize national caravans to mourn the many thousands gone, to demand a smooth and open transition of power and to lift up the moral policies we need immediately and in the first days of the new administration.

Later in the day, the co-chairs of the Poor People’s Campaign will lead a National Memorial Service mourning the loss of 250,000 people to COVID-19 and calling the nation to a moral agenda in the first 100 days of the new administration.

We stand together to demand moral policies geared towards the 140 million poor and low-income people who are at the center of these crises. They are the moral center that must guide your actions in this perilous time.

We deliver this moral mandate to provide short and long-term comprehensive relief from the pandemics of COVID-19, systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation, militarism and the false narratives that keep us apart.

Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II
President, Repairers of the Breach
Co-Chair, Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival

Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis
Director, Kairos Center for Religions, Rights and Social Justice
Co-Chair, Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival