From LABOR-L@YORKU.CA Sat Sep 30 06:50:48 2000
Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2000 00:30:00 -0500
Sender: Forum on Labor in the Global Economy <LABOR-L@YORKU.CA>
From: PK Murphy <pk.murphy@IRELAND.COM>
Subject: Fwd: Poor People's World Summit to End Poverty
To: LABOR-L@YORKU.CA
Poor People's Summit to end poverty, November 15, 18, 2000, New York, NY
Announcement, 30 September 2000
Sponsored by the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign and the International Campaign for Economic Justice
Hosted by the Kensington Welfare Rights Union
Dear Friends,
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), signed over 50 years ago guarantees all human beings certain basic rights and freedoms. Among these are a number of economic human rights:
Article 23: “Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment”
Article 25: “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and wellbeing of himself and his family including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services…”
Article 26: “Everyone has the right to education…”
Despite these promises we continue to live in a world filled with the miseries of poverty, homelessness and hunger. For 50 years the poor around the world have been denied the rights promised to us in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As a global economy has emerged we have seen the problem of worldwide poverty continue to devastate so many of us. We now live in a world where over 840 million are malnourished and 1.3 billion of our people live in poverty, surviving on less than $1 a day. This impoverishment of massive numbers of the world's population occurs at a time of unprecedented and unchecked wealth amongst a few. In fact the world's richest 20% of the population controls 86% of the world's wealth. Today, the world's 3 richest people have assets greater than the combined economic output of the 48 poorest nations.
Despite our growing numbers and worsening conditions we, as poor people, continue to be marginalized and forced to disappear. We are disappeared out of our jobs, off of our land and off of the welfare rolls and into slums, prisons and starvation. Still we continue to struggle for our survival in the face of the policies of neoliberalism and globalization that seek to render us invisible. As poor people we struggle for lives with dignity and demand our basic economic human rights to food, clothing, housing, living wage jobs, healthcare and education.
As poor families in the United States we are desperate to break the isolation that we face and to ensure that we re no longer forced to be invisible. As we face growing poverty and polarization in the United States and throughout the world, we believe that the unity of the poor on a global level is absolutely essential. The Poor People's World Summit to End Poverty will be an incredible opportunity for poor leaders from around the world to coordinate our efforts to resist the devastating impacts of globalization and to demand our economic human rights. It will be the next step in an historic effort to build a movement of the poor in the United States, and to unite this movement with movements of the poor around the world.
It is our immense honor to invite your organization to send a representative to participate in the Poor People's World Summit to End Poverty to be held in New York City from November 15 18, 2000. This will be a chance for those of us most impacted by the negative effects of global poverty to gather in the belly of the beast and get organized. The World Summit will bring us together to communicate, to discuss what is happening to our communities, to strategize on the building of a global movement led by poor people and to make the initial steps of putting that plan into action.
BACKGROUND
The Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC) was born in 1998 when the Kensington Welfare Rights Union spearheaded the New Freedom Bus Tour: Freedom from Unemployment, Hunger and Homelessness in an attempt to begin to link our struggle in Kensington with others throughout the country. The bus traveled to over 30 communities across the country, linking up with grassroots organizations of poor and homeless people fighting for their lives. At each stop, the bus gathered documentation of economic human rights violations, which were taken to a concluding tribunal at the United Nations. In the fall of 1998, the organizations that were encountered along the bus tour were convened in Philadelphia for the Poor People's Summit. At that conference 35 organizations of poor and homeless families founded the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign.
The Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign is a national effort in the USA led by poor and homeless men, women and children of all races to raise the issue of poverty as a human rights violation. Together the PPEHRC is fighting for our basic human rights as provided for in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: the right to a decent job at a living wage, the right to a suitable home, the right to food, the guarantee of quality education and quality healthcare, and a future for us and our families. From migrant workers in Florida and welfare moms in Boston to public housing tenants in Chicago and downsized workers in Ohio to homeless workers in Atlanta and workfare workers in California, poor people have across the United States of America have joined together to fight an escalating war against poverty in our wealthy nation.
Knowing that it will take a global movement of poor people to create a world free from poverty, the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign sponsored the March of the Americas in October of 1999. Poor families from the United States and from the rest of the Americas united in this month-long march from Washington DC to the United Nations in New York City. Landless workers from Brazil, coca farmers from Bolivia and Colombia, peasant communities from Guatemala, striking students from Mexico, poor mothers from Quebec and others joined with the poor and homeless of the United States to march together and share experiences and strategies.
In May 1999 people from around the globe gathered at The Hague to hold a summit to discuss how to end the existence of war. At this Hague Appeal for Peace it was determined that poverty is one of the root causes of war. The Kensington Welfare Rights Union, as part of the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, agreed to spearhead the International Campaign for Economic Justice, to raise the fact that there cannot be peace in the world without the elimination of poverty. As a kick-off to the International Campaign for Economic Justice we agreed to hold the Poor People's World Summit to End Poverty to further the worldwide movement to end poverty led by the poor ourselves.
OBJECTIVES
The Poor People's World Summit to End Poverty will offer a rare opportunity for delegates representing poor people's organizations and movements from the United States and around the globe to come together. We will gather in New York City within shouting distance of many of the institutions of global power including the Wall St. and the United Nations. While we are gathered here, in the “belly of the beast” we will exchange experiences, strategies and visions for a world without poverty. This summit will act to design, plan and establish a structure for the Hague Appeal for Peace's International Campaign for Economic Justice.
Among our goals for the Summit are:
- To bring together the organized poor from the U.S. and the rest of the world to share the lessons, experiences and histories of our respective movements.
- For the poor of the world to have the opportunity to communicate directly.
- Learn from movements worldwide that are led and organized by the poor themselves.
- To strategize and plan how to globalize our struggles into a worldwide movement to end poverty led by the poor ourselves.
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INTERNATIONAL STRATEGY STATEMENT
Call for a Poor People's World Summit to End Poverty
The Movement of the Poor in the United States in the Context of a Global Movement of the Poor
With the passage of welfare reform in 1996, the United States government absolved itself of the responsibility to provide for the human rights of its people to food, housing, clothing, education, living wage jobs and health care. In doing so, the United States government stands in clear violation of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which in articles 23, 25, and 26 spells out the economic human rights of all human beings. Downsizing, the growth of contingent labor, decreasing access to health care, and welfare reform are leaving millions of people in the United States with no means to feed, house and clothe themselves and to provide for their families. Increasing poverty in the U.S., the richest and most powerful country in the world, will not only have a major impact on U.S. society, but will have tremendous impact on the entire world.
Poverty is increasing worldwide as national governments, supported by the U.S., dismantle their welfare states and eliminate their commitment to provide for the basic needs of their people. This impoverishment comes at a time of unprecedented wealth, when the abundance that the world produces could end misery worldwide. Rising inequality is giving rise to movements of the poor, homeless, unemployed and underemployed in every part of the world, as we organize to demand and reclaim our human rights to the necessities of life.
Poor, unemployed and homeless families across the United States have begun to organize to take back the basic necessities of life, uniting across every barrier and leading a movement to end poverty. In October 1999, the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign organized the March of the Americas, from Washington, DC, to the United Nations. Poor and homeless families and their allies from across the United States were joined by organizations of the poor from Canada, Latin America and Europe. Together we entered the first-ever petition at the Organization of American States (OAS) charging the U.S. government with violating the economic human rights of its own people. The Poor People's World Summit to End Poverty is the next step in this historic effort to build a movement of the poor in the United States, and to unite this movement with movements of the poor around the world. We are desperate to break the isolation that we as poor families in the United States face, and to ensure that poverty in the United States no longer remains invisible.
The Poor People's World Summit to End Poverty has three main goals: 1) to bring attention to the poverty and the struggle of the poor in the United States and our efforts to unite with the poor of the world, 2) to enable the organized poor of the U.S. to learn from movements of the poor worldwide, and for the poor from around the world to learn from each other, and 3) to identify areas in which organizations and movements of the poor around the world might work together in our common struggle to end poverty.
- Given the United States' domination of the economic, political and military systems of countries around the world, we, the organized poor in the United States, believe that a movement of the poor in the US has a strategic role to play in a global movement of the poor to end poverty worldwide.
- The dismantling of the welfare system in the U.S. and the rising level of structural unemployment as a result of globalization and downsizing have made possible for the first time in decades the multiracial unity of the poor in the US, and the unity of the poor in the US with the poor in the rest of the world.
- The movement of the poor in the United States is in its very beginning stages and is incredibly undeveloped. The end of the welfare state in this country means that our reality is beginning to resemble more and more that of the rest of the world. We need to learn models of survival and organizing from brothers and sisters who have a long history of organizing large numbers of people who have nothing.
- For this reason, we are calling on the organized poor of the world to contribute to the building of a movement of the poor in the United States by participating in the Poor People's World Summit to End Poverty and sharing the lessons and history of your movements.
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