We are fully into the election season, with much debate, dissension and noise coming through the airwaves. There is a great need for nonpartisan discussion and moral clarity on how to respond.
One positive model is a new initiative unfolding in Springfield: WE THE PEOPLE OF MA — a collaborative public outreach effort between the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Presbyterian Church and Alden Baptist Church, two churches with a long, proud history in the city.
Through this partnership, these churches are hosting Town Hall Meetings “to encourage voter participation and to inform individuals about relevant local and national issues that impact their daily living and the well-being of the larger society.”
The first of these Town Hall meetings, with a panel of speakers to jump-start the discussion, is being held Saturday, Feb. 29, at the Springfield Public Library. Because I serve as a minister at Alden, I have been asked to be on the panel and I am honored to do so.
My charge as a panelist is to address the values that inform and influence decisions about how to vote. The event organizers are clear that this is not an opportunity to criticize or support any particular party or candidate. The goal is to encourage people to vote their values when deciding who to select and what to approve/disapprove when considering candidates and propositions.
I appreciate the organizers’ efforts to bring people together to discuss the importance of voting, and what informs our decisions about who and what to support.
I have taken this invitation to speak at the first WE THE PEOPLE OF MA Town Hall very seriously and considered deeply what I will share. After much reading and thinking, I decided there is no better guide to help us decide what issues and values should influence our voting than the five pillars of the “Declaration of Fundamental Rights and Poor People’s Moral Agenda” promoted by the Poor People’s Campaign (PPC) — the visionary movement led by the Rev. Dr. William Barber and the Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis. Their guiding recommendations are summarized below.
The first of the demands of the Poor People’s Campaign is to challenge the evil of systemic racism. One key example of this, the PPC makes clear, is how significantly we are losing ground on the issue of voting rights. Since 2010, 23 states have passed undeniably racist voter suppression laws that have made it harder for people of color to register to vote, reducing early voting days, purging voting rolls, and promoting restrictive voter ID laws. Voting our values means questioning a candidate’s position on the issue of voting rights: is this an issue that concerns the candidate and appears on the list of her or his priorities.
The second pillar of the campaign is a focus on poverty and inequality. During the past 50 years, even though the U.S. economy has grown eighteenfold, wealth inequality has expanded, the cost of living has increased, and social programs that meet human needs have been cut. As concerned citizens, we need to support living wage laws when we enter the voting booth.
We must ask the candidates seeking our votes if they support equal pay for equal work and if they promote fully funding social welfare program and ending the attacks on SNAP, CHIP, HEAP and other vital programs that help poor people.
The third pillar is the issue of ecological devastation. The PPC recognizes that our current national policies do not protect or value human life or the ecological systems in which we live. Instead, current national policies have prioritized the financial interests of corporate elites over our planet’s natural resources.
Because poor people bear the brunt of the costs and impacts of extreme weather and other harsh climate effects, our votes must reflect the belief that clean air and water and a healthy environment are fundamental human rights.
Any candidate seeking public office — locally or nationally — must articulate how they will address the climate emergency we now face.
The fourth pillar is war economy and militarism. As viewed by the Poor People’s Campaign, the federal budget is a national disgrace. Fifty-three cents of every dollar in the budget is devoted to military spending, while anti-poverty programs receive only 15 cents of every dollar.
“Instead of waging a War on Poverty, we have been waging a War on the Poor, at home and abroad, for the benefit of a few,” the Campaign states.
Voting our values, I believe, means demanding a reallocation of resources away from the military budget toward education, health care, jobs creation and building a green economy.
The Poor People’s Campaign is creating a movement that urges us all to question candidates about how they intend to set specific goals and legislative priorities that value human life, uplift community and health, and allocate funds to meet human needs.
Finally, the Moral Agenda of the Poor People’s Campaign closes with a Call for National Morality. The campaign seeks a moral revival to make this country great for all those for whom this country has never been great.
“We have the right,” the Campaign declares, “to ground our public policies and budget allocations in a moral narrative that prioritizes and follows our deepest religious and Constitutional moral commitments to justice.”
The pillars of the Poor People’s Campaign can serve as a guide for thinking about how to vote, what policies to endorse, and which candidates are most in harmony with the values that matter deeply in our lives.
In thinking about the important decisions we face in the voting booth, I also find the “3 Great Loves” initiative coming from the United Church of Christ (UCC) to be a simple and powerful guide. The UCC is a progressive, mainline Protestant denomination with congregations all over western Massachusetts.
As an ordained UCC pastor, I am grateful for the “3 Great Loves” that the denomination is promoting throughout our network of churches nationwide.
In a highly abbreviated form, the “3 Great Loves” mirrors the pillars of the Poor People’s Campaign: Love of neighbor. Love of children. Love of Creation.
The “3 Great Loves” encompass welcoming the stranger, embracing the beauty and diversity of all God’s people, caring for children through quality education, removing guns from streets and schools, and being active stewards of this good green Earth.
The UCC’s “3 Great Loves” go hand-in-hand with the five pillars of the Poor People’s Campaign. Both call for moral and ethical choices, in and out of the voting booth, that honor all life, uplift community, and protect this planet.
Love of neighbor. Love of children. Love of Creation. I think the Poor People’s Campaign would approve.
The Rev. Dr. Andrea Ayvazian of Northampton is an associate pastor at Alden Baptist Church in Springfield. She is also the founder and director of the Sojourner Truth School for Social Change Leadership, which offers free movement-building classes from Greenfield to Springfield.