In the midst of Week 5 of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival‘s #40DaysOfAction, Kairos Center co-director and Campaign co-chair Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, Kairos staff members Shailly Gupta Barnes and Noam Sandweiss-Back, and six other moral witnesses from the Poor People’s Campaign were arrested on Monday for praying on the steps of the US Supreme Court, asking for repentance for a Court whose recent decisions, including A. Phillip Randolph Institute v. Husted earlier that day, have suppressed voter registration and questioned labor rights.
After forming a circle on the Supreme Court steps, they prayed:
We are here, God, because another law came down today, a law that denies the very fundamental rights of your people—the right to be free. And when our rights to be free are violated, our voting rights, our housing rights, our labor rights, our education rights, we moral leaders, with you on our side, in front of this Supreme Court, do declare that we will continue to do your work.
Then they were arrested:
They were held in jail for over 24 hours before they were finally released. Like poor people experience across this country on a daily basis, they were left handcuffed for many hours, given very little food, and kept in roach-infested cells. As Rev. Theoharis told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!:
I think it just ties into why we need a Poor People’s Campaign, why we need to stand up and declare that we need the rights to living wages and to housing and to voting rights.
It is an outrage that the same Supreme Court that in the Masterpiece Cakeshop decision upheld discrimination against the LGBTQI community under the guise of protecting religious freedom, arrested nine people of good will for praying on their steps.
Since our institutions are failing us, it is imperative that the Kairos Center continues its long-haul work of building a broad social movement that is led by the poor and dispossessed of our land. Make a donation today to support the important work of the Kairos Center, and join us in Washington, D.C. on June 23 to be part of the thousands-strong crowd flooding the streets to Stand Against Poverty and Systemic Racism.
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