13 May 2023
To the Poor People’s Campaign y La Canpaña de La Gente Pobre
To the citizens of Resurrection City
Los cuidadanos de la Ciudad de la Resurrección
I salute the heroes and veterans with the sea of love
To Stanley Levison, Miriam Wright Edelman, Martin Luther King, Jr, Ralph Abernathy – the seeds that gave birth to the Poor People’s Campaign.
To Cornelius “Cornbread” Givens, Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick, Jimmy Collier, Gilberto Gerena Valentín, Sister Annie Chamberrs, Tillie Walker, Mattie Grinnell, Chief Big Snake, Reies López Tijerina, Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales, Hank Adams, Clyde Warrior, Elsie Snake, George & Rose Crow Flies High, Click Johnson, Donald J. Richmond, Jr. (Tekawerente) – for keeping the struggle.
And deep gratitude to Sister Linda Arako, (Cree), who gave us permission to build the City of Hope.
And to Brother Chairman Rap Brown of SNCC and Stokely Carmichael, who visited us at Resurrection City
And a special thanks to Walt Reynolds of the Diggers, who came and created God’s Eye Bakery “Free Bread Forever”
All the allies that shared their love and heart and soul with the voiceless of the brutal pain of being poor in the Other America, in the richest country in the world, Blacks, Indigenous, Puerto Ricans, Chicanos, and poor white Appalachians were on this sacred space grows the City of Resurrection, marching and chanting in the streets of Washington, DC, to petition the seat of government for our democratic right to free speech
To hear our suffering
As nonviolence was our only weapon
LBJ, Ramsey Clark, the fearmongers, the Dixiecrat Democratic Party and Republican allies and the oligarchy
And J Edgar Hoover and the surveillance state, who were denying our constitutional rights, our right to assemble
We were now the red menace, the black menace, the brown menace, and the poor white menace
Because we were brothers and sisters
In a rainbow of nations
From the oppressed people
Marching with our voice
Guided with love
The power structure feared us
We were demanding peace, ending the war in Vietnam
Freedom for poor people against injustice
Against police brutality and hunger
Foor for poor people and jobs, to end institutional apartheid USA.
From their own political interests, of, determination to destroy the Poor People’s Campaign and Resurrection City, our home with their spies and their destructive campaigns and their infiltration of our City with their ghetto informers
They feared the truth of the Poor People’s Campaign and to this day it’s the same
Our history of the Poor People’s Campaign
Even with the elite lynch mob mentality, brutality and murder
Of the poor people of Resurrection City
Our struggle
We saw the gains of our demands years later: free food stamps, Supplemental Security Income, Bilingual education, some public housing, and some improvements of Indigenous demands
And Improvements of Puerto Rican demands
In front of my own eyes on April 30, 1975, I saw the end of the Vietnam War
Peace now! Peace now!
“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” (Martin Luther King Jr)
Over 50 years ago, we were 60 million poor
And now under of the so-called era of the two-bit politicians
Poor people in the US now total 150 million people
With the same thing or even worse than what it was
But we need a real poor people’s campaign
We were the real poor people
We were not slackers
Not an Elmer Gantry from the movie
Preaching only the value of a hustle
In the tradition of the American hustler neoliberaism
That we were, in 1968, the original Poor People’s Campaign
We stood for peace and not war or supporting the war machine
Like some people claim that they are moral
But they support the war machine
Not peace on Earth
We paid the sacrifice price for opposing the War in Vietnam
Just as we used to chant
Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kil today?
As history is repeating itself
As the young people are marching and chanting today
Hey Joe Biden, how many kids did you kill today?
Peace now!
We are not marching anymore to war!
Carlos Raúl Dufflar & Ángel L. Martínez
Poor People’s Embassy - Embajada de la Gente Pobre 