By Anthony Smith

Principle No. 1 of the Poor People’s Campaign, a national call for moral revival: We are rooted in a moral analysis based on our deepest religious and constitutional values that demand justice for all. Moral revival is necessary to save the heart and soul of our democracy.

Did you ever have a childhood dream? I did. I wanted to be an astronaut. I dreamed of transporting people to new worlds and leaving earth to travel to galaxies far away. I never lived into that childhood fixation of becoming an interstellar traveler. However, recently, I have come to the realization that I am one. As a preacher and community member, I am a moral astronaut — the kind of astronaut who transports people to new moral worlds. Carrying them from the world of the status quo to a world that is just and loving.

I take a lot of my navigation cues from a growing movement of moral astronauts and moral witnesses called the Poor People’s Campaign, a national call for moral revival. Principally, the group campaign is co-led by the Rev. Dr. William Barber II and the Rev. Liz Theoharis along with a massive coalition of individuals, groups and organizations from around the country seeking to address the human impact of injustice in the United States. With the fact-based, deep and truthful moral analysis of the report “The Souls of Poor Folk: Auditing America,” we are educated on how the evils of systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation and the war economy and militarism are persistent, pervasive and perpetuated by a distorted moral narrative that must be challenged.

The Poor People’s Campaign continues the prophetic legacy of others of the civil rights generation and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s mission to transport us from this world of injustice and oppression to a world that is just, free and equitable. This movement seeks to fight to fly us to new moral vistas and terrains.

The first principle of the PPC is also an invitation to travel to a more just world. I invite you to read and reflect on it to nurture and build up your moral imagination.

The Rev. Anthony Smith is a Salisbury pastor and a member of the Poor People’s Campaign’s Salisbury Circle.