Poor People’s Campaign rallies working class to the polls

KYLIE MARSH | THE CHARLOTTE POST

Repairers of the Breach rallied voters Saturday at Mayfield Memorial Baptist Church as part of the Moral March to the Polls Tour. Organizers launched the campaign to bring low-income voters to the electoral process to advocate for representative change.

Working class voters in Charlotte are marching to the state capitol on March 2.

Repairers of the Breach, a faith organization of the Poor People’s Campaign, rallied voters Saturday at Mayfield Memorial Baptist Church as a stop on the Moral March to the Polls Tour. Charlotte faith leaders spoke to reporters about the interests of poor and working-class voters this campaign cycle.

“How many of you know someone who has had a bad experience with the healthcare system? How many of you know someone that hasn’t had all the resources they need in their schools?” organizer Rob Stephens asked the crowd. “How many of you know someone that has a mental health crisis and instead of services they’ve gotten stigmatized? How many of you know someone who’s had to choose between going to work and childcare?”
They all raised their hands in response.

“These are things that are happening to all of us,” he said.

Repairers of the Breach was launched in 2015 by Goldsboro native Bishop William J. Barber II as an appeal to religious morality to advance social justice. Thirty other states across the nation are rallying working-class voters to their state capitols. Barber has previously called the poor and working class electorate America’s “sleeping giant.”

Sangria Noble, a Charlotte grandmother, receives $40 monthly in state assistance to care for her grandchildren. She said her community needs affordable housing and breathes unclean air.
“These children are witnesses to this immorality,” Noble said.  She also stated that poverty is America’s 4th-leading cause of death. “We die because we are poor.”

The Revs. Glencie Rhedrick, Rodney Sadley and Peter Wherry are members of the Charlotte Clergy Coalition for Justice. They each raised the needs of the poor in Charlotte, including affordable housing, adequate housing, livable wages, and robust healthcare access.

“Charlotte is a vibrant city with a growing economy. But unfortunately, this prosperity has not been equally shared by all residents,” Rhedrick said. “What our problem really is, is insufficient wages for our people to own the homes that they desire.”

Rhedrick connected the issue of wages to the cycle of mass incarceration and recidivism.

Wherry, pastor of Mayfield Memorial, told a story about meeting with North Carolina legislators.

“We called ourselves having a teach in, but we found the class truant,” Wherry said. “They told us what the church ought to do for the poor. What the faith communities and synagogues and mosques should do what we came to petition them to do.”

Wherry said that the clergy approached the legislators for partnership but that “it was clear they didn’t want to be partners.”

Mayfield Memorial has been active guiding people in Sugar Creek to health and housing resources they may need. Wherry described Charlotte’s Sugar Creek neighborhood as “ground zero.” The church also owns Memorial Apartments, which has a restricted deed for 60 years, keeping units affordable at a stable rate.

Wherry reminded supporters their purpose for marching on Raleigh.

“We need to change some seats,” he said. “We need to flip some districts. We need to set up activity rooms so that we can register and educate and mobilize voters.”

Sadler also made appeals to faith, referencing a City Council decision last week to criminalize behaviors such as public urination and panhandling often attributed to homeless people. He also noted that poverty is increasing among Black and brown Americans.  

“We need a movement that reminds us all that each and every one of us could end up being poor,” he said, adding that a natural disaster or hospital stay could financially ruin anyone. “The way that we treat the poor in our country, it’s not just the way we’re treating our people, it’s the way we’re treating our god.”

Rob Stephens said that only about half of North Carolina’s working-class need to vote to make a difference, noting that “41.5% of the electorate in North Carolina is poor and low income. If only 19% of that 40% votes or haven’t voted before, the whole map changes for the state. If the map changes for the state, it changes in the nation…

“If we can change the state, we can change the South; change the South, we can change the nation. We can make it a heck of a lot safer for the rest of the world.”

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