Poor People’s Campaign holds sixth and final rally in Harrisburg
After staging demonstrations for weeks, the Pennsylvania chapter of the national Poor People's Campaign has ended its extended residency in the state Capitol rotunda.
Demonstrators speak and play guitar at the last of six Poor People's Campaign rallies. (Katie Meyer/WITF)
After staging demonstrations for the past six consecutive Mondays, the Pennsylvania chapter of the national Poor People’s Campaign has ended its extended residency in the state Capitol rotunda.
In those six weeks of protesting, they chalked up 76 “civil disobedience” arrests. Nationwide, the group has reported over 2,000 in total.
Next, the campaign is headed to Washington DC for a rally this weekend. But organizer Nijmie Zakkiyyah Dzurinko said they’ll be back in the Harrisburg soon.
“The bill to end life without parole is one of the bills that folks inside the campaign are working on,” she noted. “Folks are fighting around universal health care, folks are fighting around gerrymandering and the gift ban–there’s so many different things people are working on.”
The commonwealth’s Poor People’s Campaign chapter has members and organizers from over a dozen other advocacy groups, unions, and religious organizations.
Dzurinko described the effort as a way to unify all their disparate goals under a common banner.
“Our goal has been to unite and to bring together organizations of the poor,” she said. “Organizations around the country of poor and dispossessed people who are struggling for housing, for food, for education, for health care.”
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