Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire
  • omnibus

The Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign & Black Alliance for Peace Center Opposition to War
Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign/POOR PEOPLE’S ARMY
22 Jun 2022
The Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign & Black Alliance for Peace Center Opposition to War

As groups prepared to gather in Washington D.C. to discuss poverty, the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign and Black Alliance for Peace say that in the spirit of Dr. King, opposition to war must be at the center of the discussion.

For immediate release, June 13th, 2022

Contact: Cheri Honkala 215-869-4753, [email protected]

On June 16th at 10:00am EST, the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC) and the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) co-sponsored the Press Conference on "Thinking Beyond Ukraine: Their War is not our War," exposing the flawed thinking in Left Leaning and Anti-Poverty movements taking the same approach to solving problems that we’ve taken for decades with little to no results. Participants included Human Rights activists and former Green Party Vice Presidential candidates Cheri Honkala and Ajamu Baraka. Watch the press conference here!

These groups are coming together in the spirit of Martin Luther King’s famous Riverside Speech “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence” where he took a bold, visionary, and necessary stance against the Vietnam War. This stance, widely considered radical at the time, would prove historically validated and critical to both the core philosophy of the Civil Rights and Anti-war movements of the time. The basis for this correctness was the astute observation that the United States was not only investing millions and millions of dollars to “solve” problems abroad that they had not solved at home, but additionally that there was no genuine investment, honesty or effort towards actually solving those problems stateside.

In this speech, MLK states:

“A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated, as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So, I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.”

It is in this spirit that we call for a radical break with the status quo in the development of the Poor People’s Army which embraces People(s)-Centered Human Rights (PCHRs), the Black radical human rights approach to human liberation. PCHRs are those non-oppressive rights that reflect the highest commitment to universal human dignity and social justice that individuals and collectives define and secure for themselves through social struggle. They are grounded in the recognition that the genesis of the assaults on human dignity that are at the core of human rights violations is located in relationships of oppression and that, therefore, it is only as a result of the radical restructuring of those oppressive relations that authentic human rights can be realized.

As such, we come today in the tradition of our ancestors to claim these rights. We come in the tradition of the Harriet Tubmans and the John Browns, the Malcolm Xs and the Black Panthers. We gather not to map out a ten-point policy plan that the Democratic Party will pay lip service to, mildly and softly teasing it during an election season only to immediately betray those who put them in office. We are calling for an end to these conditions: a solution that teaches people to reclaim land, housing, food, culture, education, and a humane society for all. On August 12-14, we will be hosting a national Boot Camp near Philadelphia to put in place this plan to secure our future. Register now at: https://bit.ly/BootcampAugust2022

The Poor People’s Army is a nonviolent ARMY of poor and working people, led by poor people, fighting for our survival by any means necessary. For three decades, The Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC)/Poor People’s Army has been reclaiming the basic necessities of life with free food distribution and housing takeovers of abandoned properties. We try to help anyone who comes to us. We center music, arts, and culture and practice the politics of love. The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) seeks to recapture and redevelop the historic Anti-war, anti-imperialist, and pro-peace positions of the radical black movement. Through educational activities, organizing, and movement support, organizations and individuals in the Alliance work to oppose both militarized domestic state repression and the policies of de-stabilization, subversion, and the permanent war agenda of the U.S. state globally.

 

Black Alliance For Peace
Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign
Poor Peoples Army
People Centered Human Rights

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles. Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


Related Stories

The State Repression of U.S. Settler Colonialism in The South: BAP ATLANTA STATEMENT
Black Alliance for Peace Atlanta City-Wide Alliance
The State Repression of U.S. Settler Colonialism in The South: BAP ATLANTA STATEMENT
25 January 2023
The plan for an Atlanta police training facility known as "Cop City" is the latest phase of state repression in that region. 
The ‘Collective West’ Declares War on the World
Black Alliance For Peace
The ‘Collective West’ Declares War on the World
09 November 2022
The U.S.
Amidst the Biden Administration’s Forever-Wars Policy in Africa, BAP Launches a Month of Action Against AFRICOM (U.S. Africa Command)
Black Alliance For Peace
Amidst the Biden Administration’s Forever-Wars Policy in Africa, BAP Launches a Month of Action Against AFRICOM (U.S. Africa Command)
21 September 2022
The Black Alliance for Peace hosts a Month of Action Against the US Africa Command, AFRICOM, every October.
AFRICOM Watch Bulletin #40
Black Alliance For Peace
AFRICOM Watch Bulletin #40
15 June 2022
The latest Black Alliance for Peace AFRICOM Watch Bul
On African Liberation Day Biden’s Troop Deployment to Somalia Confirms Africa is Not Free
Black Alliance For Peace
On African Liberation Day Biden’s Troop Deployment to Somalia Confirms Africa is Not Free
25 May 2022
The Black Alliance for Peace marks African Liberation Day with a statement condemning the latest US troop deployment to Somalia.
The Black Alliance for Peace Calls on Latin American and Caribbean Nations to Boycott the Summit of the Americas
Black Alliance For Peace
The Black Alliance for Peace Calls on Latin American and Caribbean Nations to Boycott the Summit of the Americas
18 May 2022
The failure of the U.S.
The Annual Resurrection of a Fake Dr. King and Re-entombment of the Black Liberation Movement
Black Alliance For Peace
The Annual Resurrection of a Fake Dr. King and Re-entombment of the Black Liberation Movement
19 January 2022
Black Alliance for Peace reminds us that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
People Centered Human Rights and the Black Radical Tradition
​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
People Centered Human Rights and the Black Radical Tradition
07 December 2021
The West’s fiction of “human rights” has been weaponized by neoliberals to rationalize naked imperialist interventions.
Black Alliance for Peace Condemns Trial of Black Activist Dedan Waciuri as a Violation of Human Rights
Black Alliance For Peace
Black Alliance for Peace Condemns Trial of Black Activist Dedan Waciuri as a Violation of Human Rights
07 December 2021
The state targets Black activists who exercise their right to speak and assemble freely.
Tunde Ozasua
Building the Movement to Shut Down AFRICOM
29 September 2021
October 2021 is the 13th anniversary of the founding of the U.S. Africa Command, AFRICOM.

More Stories


  • The US Continues Escalating in Ukraine
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    The US Continues Escalating in Ukraine
    01 Feb 2023
    The U.S. got more than it bargained for after instigating the Ukrainian conflict. The Biden foreign policy team grows more desperate and their plans become more dangerous as they reckon with the…
  • EXCERPT: Howard University: Every Black Thing and Its Opposite, Kwame Ture
    Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    EXCERPT: Howard University: Every Black Thing and Its Opposite, Kwame Ture
    01 Feb 2023
    Kwame Ture reminds us that the Black university is a place of contradictions – and a potential site of struggle.
  • Ilhan Omar Is Not Mama Africa
    Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    Ilhan Omar Is Not Mama Africa
    01 Feb 2023
    The new Speaker of the House announced he will remove Congresswoman Ilhan Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee. The attack from republicans has given her image a boost, but her record shows the…
  • Tennessee’s Tonton Macoute? Or, rotten Orchard called Capitalist State Machine?
    Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    Tennessee’s Tonton Macoute? Or, rotten Orchard called Capitalist State Machine?
    01 Feb 2023
                                                                                                         Tennessee’s Tonton Macoute? Or, rotten 
  •  BAR Book Forum: J.T. Roane’s Book, “Dark Agoras”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: J.T. Roane’s Book, “Dark Agoras”
    01 Feb 2023
    This week’s featured author is J.T. Roane. His book is Dark Agoras: Insurgent Black Social Life and the Politics of Place.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us