Anthony Gibbs

MARQUETTE — Anthony Gibbs is headed to Washington, D.C., but it’s not a pleasure trip.

The Ishpeming native, who is employed with PSI in Marquette as a test center administrator, was to leave early this morning for the Poor People’s Campaign March — a “Global Day of Solidarity and Sending Forth Call to Action Mass Rally” set for Saturday.

The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival has reached out to communities in more than 30 states over the past two years, with the basic purpose of battling poverty and inequality, systemic racism, ecological devastation and the war economy.

Before his death in 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wanted to have people march from east to west, picking up the poor and disenfranchised, and then back east, bringing attention to poverty, Gibbs said.

His assassination, however, thwarted that effort.

That effort is being revived.

“It’s based upon the same thing,” Gibbs said. “We are gathering those who are disaffected, who are hurt in those things, and we’re calling for a moral revolution in America.”

Gibbs, who said he is “in between paychecks,” has the money to get to Washington, D.C., but he has to scrounge up money for the bus fare to return home.

He isn’t daunted by that challenge.

“It’s that important to me to where I will take that risk,” Gibbs said.

He said he will go to a staging area in Washington, D.C., not with a rifle and rucksack, but with his computer and notebooks.

“I might carry with me an American flag,” Gibbs said.

So, why is he making the trip?

“I woke up one day and couldn’t take being on the sideline anymore,” Gibbs said.

What he couldn’t stand was the “hurt and anger and crappiness that we treat each other with.”

Gibbs then heard about the march.

“I’m sick and tired of people saying, ‘It’s not my problem,'” Gibbs said. “If I’m going to convince people of anything, I have to be a leader, and that means that I have to show the example of what it means to go on a mission and take a risk.”

He believes he’s on the right track.

“I know whatever comes of this, I’ll be a better person, and America will be better for it,” he said.

For more information on the event, visit poorpeoplescampaign.org.

Christie Bleck can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 250.