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CityAndStatePA .com
December 2021
Q & A with Rabbi
Michael Pollack Non-violent civil disobedience put him in handcuffs more than once. By Justin Sweitzer
What prompted you to form March on Harrisburg?
It really started in 2016 before the presidential election – in the spring of 2016. We were a group of people who were frustrated that our political system seemed incapable of responding to all the crises coming at us day-to-day. We just saw these fights happening, lasting for decades, and there’s been no resolution, no progress, on things ranging from taking on climate change, to education funding, to dealing with opioid abuse, to progressive tax structures. We saw all these problems and a lot of us were working on these different fronts of struggle, and we just kept tracing it all back to the same set of people, the same greed, the same corruption – “the money wall” is what we call it. In these various fronts of struggle, we all banged our heads up against that money wall. And so we came together and decided to dismantle that money wall. We all had too many experiences where a group has pushed a bill really far and then a guy in a
suit walks in the back room and whispers something to the city councilor’s ear and the bill’s dead – that’s it. So, we really realized that we have to unite across all different issues and challenge the corruption that maintains the system. Was gift-ban legislation always your primary focus? How did that come to be March on Harrisburg’s main priority? We went with a gift ban because it’s something that’s very easy to understand. It’s not campaign finance reform, which usually leads people to kind of fall asleep … But the gift ban, people get that. It’s a gutshot kind of a concept. We also knew that it was unanimously popular amongst the public, and there was not going to be any need for
MARCH ON HARRISBURG
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NERGIZED BY A march from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C. in spring 2016, Rabbi Michael Pollack formed March on Harrisburg, a government reform advocacy group that has developed a reputation for staging nonviolent demonstrations aimed at rooting out corruption in state government. The group uses three major tactics to advocate for good government reforms: physical marches to raise awareness about their cause, lobbying elected leaders to earn their support, and, if that fails, taking direct, nonviolent action to get attention. At the heart of March on Harrisburg’s efforts is legislation that would ban elected leaders from accepting gifts – a practice currently permissible under state law. Pollack and March on Harrisburg activists have framed the gifts as legal bribery and argue the practice undermines trust in Pennsylvania’s elected leaders and democracy itself. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Pollack and members of March on Harrisburg have been arrested in the past for their various tactics.
