We all have to start somewhere. Every person, every idea, every solution to the problems we see, all have to start somewhere.

This past Monday at Ala Moana Beach Park, a new chapter started in the story of these islands and how those who do business here, those who vacation here, and those who claim to govern here, treat the people who live here. It’s not a new story — just a new chapter.

That day was the first public action of the Poor People’s Campaign in recent times on these islands. The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival is co-organized by the Revs. William Barber and Liz Theoharis along with hundreds of local and national grassroots groups across the country.

On May 14, Barber and Theoharis kicked off a six-week season of nonviolent direct action demanding new programs to fight systemic poverty and racism, immediate attention to ecological devastation, and measures to curb militarism and the war economy, reigniting the 1968 movement started by Martin Luther King Jr. and so many others. For five consecutive weeks, protesters have taken to state capitols across the country, with thousands arrested nationwide for engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience.

Monday’s action was not a protest. It was not even mildly disobedient. In fact, we received a permit for everything we did during our event — this year. The goal of the gathering was two-fold.

First, we wanted to give voice to those individuals struggling against forces whose profit and dominance grow at the expense of those who are struggling on this island. Second, we sought to create moral fusion, a term used by the Rev. Barber to describe the experience of seeing how vastly more important what unites us morally is, than what divides us along any other lines.

People fighting for a living wage, people who serve the homeless youth of this island, people advocating to end this shameful era of racist mass-incarceration and people of faith — just to name a few of the groups who attended — all found common ground Monday.

Reading and hearing the stories of those locked in life-altering, life-threatening struggles was hard. And we know that many good people across this island and beyond devote their lives and their hearts to helping alleviate these struggles. But after many, many years, the struggles are not getting easier. And the causes are getting worse.

I know that the answer to these struggles is not a one-off event like Monday might seem to be. The answer to these struggles may not even be a 40-day-long coordinated campaign dedicated to striking at the heart of these moral evils and oppressive forces bent on profit motive and exploitation. But a campaign just like that is coming, and soon.

What arose Monday, and what came to be in the hearts of those taking part, was the deeply felt realization that by uniting and organizing with those who suffer, who struggle, who labor long under the pressures of these moral evils, something will begin to shift. And it has. We all have to start somewhere. We started Monday. But we have only yet begun to fight.

The Rev. T.J. FitzGerald is minister of the First Unitarian Church of Honolulu and Hawaii state organizer of the Poor People’s Campaign.