Jim Perkinson, professor of ethics and theology at ETS, has for years protested water shut-offs and home foreclosures, among other issues that primarily hurt poor people. Despite his history of speaking out and working with activists to bring about change, Perkinson says he’s not naturally inclined to activism. He embraces it, however, as he believes it not only can lead to bettering the lives of the oppressed but it gives him credibility as a professor at ETS, where advocating for social change is an integral part of education.
“I think what I do in the classroom is utterly dependent upon what I do in the street,” Perkinson says.
His students and hopefully many outside his classroom will get a chance to join the latest effort to change the lives of the disenfranchised when the Poor People’s Campaign comes to ETS. The campaign is meant to be a National Call to Moral Revival.
An informational session on the national campaign and ETS’ role will take place at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, March 15 at ETS. Perkinson and various speakers will outline Detroit and Michigan activities connected to the Poor People’s Campaign, which is being revived 50 years after Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. led the campaign in Washington, D.C.
ETS students, faculty and alumni are invited to the free event, as are members of the community. RSVP here.
MLK Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference organized the first Poor People’s Campaign 1968 to demand economic and human rights for poor Americans from every background. Organizers gave Congress a list of demands and then a group of 3,000 poor whites from Appalachia, impoverished blacks from the Deep South and Latino farm workers from California – among others – set up camp on the Washington Mall for six weeks. The campaign struggled to continue its momentum after the April 1968 assassination of King.
The 2018 revival of the original campaign is being led by Rev. Dr. William Barber II of North Carolina and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis.
As in 1968, the participants in the 2018 Poor People’s Campaign are the people being shut out of economic and educational opportunities as well as religious leaders, including ETS President Rev. Dr. Kenneth Harris. He said one of the seminary’s guiding ethical principles is to “seek to foster justice at local, national and global levels, beginning with accountability to those who are the most marginalized.”
King was unable to complete the steps he envisioned, and organizers hope to accomplish what Dr. King dreamed of. Barber has worked to raise awareness of issues affecting poor people for years and has a broad-based constituency of environmental and labor activists, rural whites, urban African-Americans, and Latinos.
King’s campaign targeted three things, what he called the “triple evils” of racism, poverty, and militarism. This year’s campaign is adding a fourth – the ecological devastation of the planet.
The national campaign will be active in the 25 states where there is evidence of blatant voter suppression. The goal is to recruit 1,000 people in each state to conduct a campaign of nonviolent resistance in those state capitals related to one or more of the four issues. The campaign runs 40 days, starting in May.
Locally, organizers have been recruiting a broad-based coalition of people in cities around Michigan, including the Upper Peninsula. While participants are primarily Christians, all faiths are welcome and many are already involved.
Perkinson has been aware of Barber’s work and signed on because the new campaign “seemed like a natural next step” for his activism. He knows many of the people involved in the campaign and believes in the issues it addresses.
“The quadruplet of issues are a shorthand for what I think is at stake as we move into the future together,” he says. “This campaign is particularly attractive in that it is led by poor people and people of color and does not allow politicians of either party to be involved as politicians, so no one has a platform. It styles itself as a moral initiative that is foregrounding the voices of poor communities themselves and religious leaders, and that is an attractive feature to me because it resists being co-opted.”
Perkinson said the Poor People’s Campaign is a natural fit at ETS, which advocates for social justice in and around Detroit.
“I think that for religious education at large to have any degree of credibility, it needs to be engaged with people where they live life and particularly focus on people who are the most in pain,” he says. “So the ways suffering gets visited on folk by large-scale economic, political and educational structures, the criminal justice structure, I think has to be at the forefront of how we talk about ultimate issues like God or spirit. I think the authenticity of education requires that kind of involvement in an ongoing fashion.”
Perkinson said the 40-day campaign from Mother’s Day to the summer solstice will be a litmus test for ETS and the community.
“It’s designed not only to increase awareness but enable networking and affiliation among people at a local level that would have an ongoing life of its own,” he says.
Ecumenical Theological Seminary 