Fifty years ago, when the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated, Ginge Savigny was a third-grade teacher in a predominately black, Southeast Washington, D.C., elementary school. That moment awakened her awareness of social and racial inequalities in society, in part, because she shared that experience with her students.
“My eyes were opened,” she told me recently, recalling how traumatized her students were by King’s murder.
Spurred on by the riotous upheaval that followed King’s death, Savigny joined the thousands of folks during the summer of 1968 who inhabited Resurrection City, the village of tents and lean-to shelters built by civil rights and anti-poverty activists. Heeding the call to continue King’s work, they had come to Washington to participate in the Poor People’s Campaign. Their encampment covered16 acres between the Lincoln and Washington monuments on the National Mall, an inescapable scene that symbolically represented the plight of poor Americans.
Savigny, who is white and grew up in relative comfort in the nearby Virginia suburbs, said that she couldn’t remain on the sidelines when so many were living without life’s necessities. So she volunteered to work in Resurrection City’s ad-hoc soup kitchen, often sneaking past the protective watch of her suburban Virginia parents and friends to do her little part for the struggle.
I met Savigny on Monday as she retraced her steps to the National Mall for an organizing rally for the 2018 Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, a renewed effort to fight today’s poverty and complete the unfinished business from half a century ago. She returned to volunteer once more, this time as a registration official for the mass rally planned for Saturday, June 23, in Washington, D.C.
“I feel very strongly that it’s people like me who must come out and speak up for other people who can’t, like the poor people who can’t leave their jobs or the immigrant who can’t be in public for fear of being arrested,” she said. “Why in the hell are we still dealing with issues such as poverty and racism? But that’s where we are. I’m retired and I have the time and energy to speak up, so I feel I must be here once again.”
But this time, Savigny brought reinforcements. Keeping upstep-for-step with Savigny was her grandson, Michael McCabe, a 16-year-old rising junior at Robinson Secondary School in Fairfax. Although he was there to support his grandmother, Michael said he’s been more involved recently in the anti-gun movement as a student leader of last month’s “March For Our Lives” demonstration, which also took place on the National Mall.
“I was raised with very socially activist parents and, of course, by my grandmother who is very, very activist,” Michael said, grinning and dipping his head toward Savigny. “I’ve been to rallies and marches with her since I was 5-years-old or so.”
Sporting a t-shirt emblazoned with “March For Our Lives,” Michael said stopping school shootings is the “movement of the moment” for his high school peers, but he’s concerned about poverty in America as well.
It’s fitting that the anti-poverty movement of the past and present has found a fresh voice with youthful activists who find a connection with the issues that most concern them. If there’s any hope for where our nation is headed, it can be found among the progressive activists, like Michael and his grandmother, who understand how diligent and persistent protest is a vital cog in preserving democracy.
And it never ends.
“I don’t think we’ll solve all our problems right now or this week,” Michael said, referring to both the issue of gun violence and poverty. “I expect be out here in 50 years, hopefully for different reasons and I don’t know what they might be. But it will be something that’s important to let your voice be heard.”