POOR PEOPLES ECONOMIC HUMAN RIGHTS CAMPAIGN

1
POOR PEOPLES ECONOMIC HUMAN RIGHTS CAMPAIGN
2
Poverty in America Today

• 36.5 million Americans live in poverty (roughly
  one in eight).
• 15.4 million Americans live in extreme poverty
  (income less than half the poverty line). 
• 12.6 million households, containing 35.5 million
  people, lacked access to adequate food at some
  point during the year
• 16 million low-income households either paid more
  for rent and utilities than the federal
  government says is affordable or lived in
  overcrowded or substandard housing.

3
The Poor Have Remained Poor in the United States
4
The U.S. is the most unequal of all the
industrialized nations
5
Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign
Mission

• The Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign
  is committed to unite the poor across color lines
  as the leadership base for a broad movement to
  abolish poverty. We work to accomplish this
  through advancing economic human rights as named
  in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

6
Economic Human RightsAs adopted by the U.N. in
1948

• Articles 19, 23, 25 and 26 provide for
• Right to a living wage job and just conditions
• Right to food, clothing, housing, health care and
  necessary social service
• Right to education
• Right to communication.
• We have to come to a clear realization that true
  individual freedom cannot exist without economic
  security and independence. Franklin Delano
  Roosevelt

7
Leadership of PPEHRC

• Cheri Honkala, Founder and National
• Organizer
• Larry Bresler, Executive Director
• Willie Baptist and Liz Theoharis, Co-
• coordinators of the University of the Poor
• Coordinating Council made up of
• representatives from 15 grassroots groups
• from across the U.S.

8
Membership of PPEHRC

• 87 grassroots and poor peoples groups from 28
  states and the District of Columbia representing
  10s of thousands of people.

9
Why do we need an organization like PPEHRC?

• Policy makers and experts have stated that
  they are waging war on poverty for decades
  without making progress.
• The movement to end poverty will not succeed
  without those directly affected at the center of
  it.

10
Why PPEHRC

• Founded and led by poor people
• The only domestic human rights campaign focused
  exclusively on economic human rights
• The only poor peoples organization using economic
  human rights as its moral foundation to bridge
  racial, ethnic and generational divides
• Marries political education and grassroots
  organizing with survival strategies
• Works to abolish poverty through local, national
  and international efforts.

11
PPEHRC Program Distribution

• Building Membership and Local Group Capacity
  Leadership Development and Training, Skills
  Building, Local Group Empowerment and Capacity
  Building
• Local Issue/Campaign Mobilizing Raising and
  organizing around local, regional and statewide
  issues of the poor with local PPEHRC affiliated
  groups.
• Mobilizing Around Issues Nationally Moving a
  larger agenda of issues of the poor through
  national events and actions
• Building Networks Linking member groups to one
  another linking the campaign to poor peoples and
  social movements globally

12
PPEHRC Principles

• Poverty and the effects of poverty have been
  hidden in the U.S. It must be made visible.
• Economic human rights provide a moral and ethical
  framework from which to build the movement
• We can not rely on others to advocate on our
  behalf. To eliminate poverty requires a movement
  uniting the poor across color lines
• All have the capacity to provide significant
  contributions and leadership to the movement. It
  can be enhanced through skills and leadership
  development

13
Activities University of the Poor

• The Educational Arm of PPEHRC
• Leadership training
• Skills training in such areas as organizing and
  the use of the media, arts culture and theology
  for members and member groups.

14
National Organizing Events

• Raises the issues of poverty in a public way
  nationally
• Coalesces low income groups and participants in
  the movement actively
• Examples Tent City, Rally and March for our
  Lives at the Republican National Convention,
  National Freedom Bus Tour, March on Washington.

15
Local Organizing Group Support, Assistance and
Capacity Building

• Incubation and development support e.g. Women in
  Transition-Louisville
• Local Campaign/Issue Support e.g. Coalition of
  Immokalee Workers-Florida, United Workers Assn.-
  Baltimore
• Capacity Building e.g. Deaf and Deaf Blind
  Committee for Human Rights-Cleveland

16
Projects of Survival

• For persons who are poor to be active, they
  must first be able to meet their basic human
  needs food, housing etc. Projects of Survival
  help people meet those needs.

17
Putting Poverty on Trial Through Truth
Commissions

• Documenting and publicizing the violations of
  economic human rights of the poor through
  personal stories to a tribunal of commissioners
• Held in local communities and nationally

18
Global Grassroots Networking

• Joining with other poor peoples groups in other
  countries both as part of a wider global movement
  to end poverty and to bring global recognition
  and thereby outside pressure to eradicate poverty
  in the U.S.

19
Raising Public Consciousness Through Media

• Shining a light on poverty and issues of poverty
• Local, national, and international press, TV etc.
  
• Production of videos and DVDs that are shown to
  groups as part of training and consciousness
  raising along with TV outlets such as PBS.

20

• "There are millions of poor people in this
  country who have very little, or even nothing to
  lose. If they can be helped to take action
  together, they will do so with a freedom and a
  power that will be a new and unsettling force in
  our complacent national life."-Dr. Martin
  Luther King, Jr.from Why We Can't Wait, 1963