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To donate to the Poor People’s Campaign, you have to send a check to the Upper West Side of Manhattan. But the Poor People’s Campaign is not a charity that helps poor people: it’s a radical leftist group preparing its own ‘resistance’ march on Washington D.C. in June 2025.

The Poor People’s Campaign is also quite wealthy, secretive and possibly in violation of the law.

William Barber II, its obese bellicose ‘pastor’, has spent nearly a decade in the limelight, yelling about the evil of Republicans. Barber co-founded the Poor People’s Campaign, which operates as a tax-exempt nonprofit despite the fact that its main activity is protesting Republicans.

The Poor People’s Campaign then goes one step further by routing donations through the Union Theological Seminary at Columbia University. The Manhattan seminary which has a tax-exempt status based on its purported mission of “educating leaders for ministry in churches” is using that status to fiscally sponsor a partisan leftist protest group while misleading the IRS.

Hiding the PPC inside the $218 million behemoth of the Union Theological Seminary (founded in 1836) conveniently obscures its finances. (How much could that $218 million do for the poor of New York City? Instead it funds activists demanding the government gouge the middle class.)

How much money does Barber make from the Poor People’s Campaign? Due to the lack of transparency, only his accountant knows, but PPC lists another Barber organization, Repairers of the Breach, as an “anchor” organization, and there he earns $224,570 a year.

Not bad for a poor man: that quarter of a million is likely only a part of his annual income.

Where does Repairers of the Breach get its money? George Soros’ Open Society Foundations gave a $5 million grant over 5 years. This was the second Soros grant to the radical leftist group. Erica Williams, one of the lead organizations for the Poor People’s Campaign and for Repairers of the Breach was also the recipient of a six figure Soros Equality Fellowship.

Behind the Poor People’s Campaign is the 15th richest man in America.

Repairers of the Breach also received over $5 million from the Ford Foundation (total assets of $16 billion) as well as money from other assorted leftist foundations and organizations.

The other ‘anchor’ of the Poor People’s Campaign is the Kairos Center which is fiscally sponsored by the Tides Center which commands over half a billion dollars in assets.

The Poor People’s Campaign is backed by organizations with over $40 billion in assets. It’s hard to get any less ‘poor’ than that. And the money isn’t used to help the poor, but to demand that the government turn over popular power to representatives of those same billionaire groups.

Which ‘poor people’ is the Poor People’s Campaign actually helping?

Chris Caruso, the operations director at Kairos according to his bio, “has been active in the movement to end poverty, led by the poor for over 30 years”. Conveniently, the executive director of Kairos, Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, a Presbyterian minister associated with the Union Theological Seminary, is Caruso’s wife. (Not that the happy couple bothers disclosing this on the Kairos site.)  They share an apartment on Manhattan’s Broadway with their kids.

Liz, the daughter of Athan Theoharis, a radical professor who claimed that the FBI had engaged in an “inquisition” in hunting for Communist spies, had gotten started establishing the ‘Poverty Initiative’ at Union Theological Seminary and then the “Poverty Scholars Program”.

Liz Theoharis and William Barber II then co-founded the Poor People’s Campaign. Poverty is no closer to being beaten, and we don’t know the full compensation of Theoharis and Barber (who also appears to do paid speaking engagements), but the Rev. Dr. Serene Jones who heads UTS earns $359,528 a year.

Caruso, Liz’s husband, also works at the treasurer of The People’s Forum, a radical pro-Hamas and pro-Communist group, controlled out of China and which has been identified as a nexus for Chinese Communist propaganda. The People’s Forum, previously reported on by Freedom Center Investigates, is funded by Neville Roy Singham, a Maoist millionaire, living in Shanghai.

Theoharis had taken part in Singham’s wedding to Code Pink’s Jodie Evans, whose organization spends a lot of time agitating for Communist China, and New York Post reporting identified multiple staffers working for both Kairos and Singham front groups. Indeed, Kairos increasingly looks like an organization controlled by the Singham network out of China.

Is the Poor People’s Campaign another of the Chinese Communist Party controlled members of the anti-Trump ‘resistance’. Shailly Gupta Barnes is listed as the policy director for Kairos and the Poor People’s Campaign and an instructor at The People’s Forum. Theoharis complained about “American military aid to Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan”. While complaints about military aid to Israel are not unusual on the Left, objections to aid to Taiwan usually come from Chinese Communist front groups. But on China, Kairos can sound a lot like Code Pink.

And, like the Singham network, Kairos and PPC are preparing for marches on D.C.

The intersection between The People’s Forum, Kairos and the PPC raises serious questions for Jewish organization figures who have supported the Poor People’s Campaign,.including Jonah Pesner of the Reform Movement’s Religious Action Center, a Barber ally, and Sharon Brous, a figure associated with various Jewish Democrats including Kamala’s husband: Doug Emhoff.

Kairos and Theoharis have been vocal in opposing Israel’s fight against Hamas. Kairos falsely describes the Jewish resistance to Hamas as “genocide”. Resources linked to by Kairos include calls for the destruction of the Jewish State. Some of the Kairos anti-Israel propaganda credits the Poor People’s Campaign and its ‘Freedom Church of the Poor’ (not an actual church, but a Facebook Live stream). What does supporting the murder of Jews have to do with the poor?

Where are the poor in all this? Not at the Poor People’s Campaign which offers only activism and organizing resources. It has a ‘Moral Budget’ of the money it demands governments should be spending on welfare, but doesn’t provide its own budget or state its salaries. It claims to be conducting a ‘Moral Audit’ when it’s the one that ought to be facing an audit.

The lack of even the most basic transparency about the Poor People’s Campaign is understandable when considering that its funding comes from the rich and it does nothing for the poor. William Barber II is the black face of a campaign organized by prosperous white leftists from Manhattan and backed by millionaire and billionaire donors and their organizations.

Behind the Poor People’s Campaign are some of the richest men in the country and the world. Their aim is not to help the poor, but to take over the United States of America.