“Urban League Fights For You” Campaign Expands into 2024 Committed to Three Ds: Defend Democracy, Demand Diversity, and Defeat Poverty
NEW YORK (January 8, 2024) – As the nation prepares to observe Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the National Urban League is putting his dream into action with a new phase of civil rights and social justice advocacy and activism, President and CEO Marc H. Morial announced today.
Based on three guiding principles — Defend Democracy, Demand Diversity, and Defeat Poverty – the campaign is an extension of the “Urban League Fights For You” initiative launched during the COVID-19 crisis and will elevate and enhance the organization’s historical commitment to employment, education, housing, healthcare, and equitable justice in the face of renewed threats.
“We are engaged in a battle for the future of this nation,” Morial said. “It is clear that the hard-fought progress since the Brown decision is under assault on every front. From the Supreme Court to right-wing state legislatures, reactionary school boards, and authoritarian presidential candidates, malicious forces are trying desperately to bend the moral arc away from justice.”
The primary objectives of the D3 campaign are:
- Combat and overturn racially-targeted voter suppression tactics such as strict voter ID laws, gerrymandering, the shuttering of polling places in predominantly minority neighborhoods, limits on early voting, and reckless purging of voter rolls.
- Overcome the white supremacist “anti-woke” backlash to diversity, equity, and inclusion policies in employment and education, access to housing and healthcare, and the criminal justice system.
- Dismantle the structural and institutional barriers to financial services, social safety net programs, quality educational resources, and other economic opportunities.
The campaign will mobilize support for federal legislation including the Freedom to Vote Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, the Protecting Our Democracy Act, expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit, and a $15 federal minimum wage indexed to inflation, along with efforts to restore voting rights to returning citizens and close the Medicaid gap.
Morial said a new phase of advocacy and activism is necessary to resist an evolving and insidious adversary.
“The 20th century Civil Rights Movement of our fathers and grandfathers was a movement to defeat Jim Crow,” Morial said. “As 21st Century dawned, we faced his son, James Crow, Esquire, who wore a suit and a tie instead of a robe and hood and replaced the n-word with ‘welfare queens.’
“Today, the son of James and the grandson of Jim, Jimmy Crow isn’t content simply to suppress Black votes; he wants the power to ignore election results altogether. He fiercely guards the symbols of white supremacy his grandfather erected on town squares and courthouse grounds to intimidate Black Americans. He rants about ‘replacement theory’ and ‘wokeness” and ‘Critical Race Theory.’”
For more information about the Urban League Fights For You: D3 campaign, visit https://link.edgepilot.com/s/cd02584a/8Tmym0ACAkO2u_jaVyM8qg?u=http://www.nul.org/program/urban-league-fights-for-you