Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign
3500 Lorain Avenue # 501A
Cleveland, Ohio 44113
info@economichumanrights.org
www.economichumanrights.org

Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

March 5, 2010

Contact: Jeff Rousset, Communications Director, 845-642-8145, jeffppehrc@gmail.com
-OR-
Cheri Honkala, National Organizer, 267-439-8419, cherihonkalappehrc@gmail.com

March to Fulfill the Dream

Historic march and caravan led by poor people goes from New Orleans to the U.S Social Forum in Detroit

NEW ORLEANS, LA – On April 4th, 2010, Easter Sunday and the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination, poor people and their allies will unite with the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC) to advance Dr. King’s dream of ending poverty. The March to Fulfill the Dream will visit dozens of cities between New Orleans and Detroit, the site of the US Social Forum 2010, to highlight the urgent need for affordable housing and healthcare in the United States. Housing, healthcare, and jobs are human rights according to the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, endorsed by the U.S. in 1948. Continuing the legacy of Dr. King’s 1968 Poor People’s Campaign, which was cut short by his assassination, the tour is part of a larger strategy to unite poor people’s groups and their allies from across the country to build a diverse nonviolent movement to end poverty.

The PPEHRC caravan will visit many cities, including historic cities from the Civil Rights movement, for which Dr. King became the famous spokesperson. Each stop will include marches, demonstrations, and speak-outs led by poor people from the local cities, dramatizing the plight of today’s swelling numbers of the poor. Among the stops is Marks, Mississippi, where Dr. King launched the original Poor People’s Campaign in 1968 with a march and caravan to the nation’s capital.

“Dr. King’s dream is as relevant today as it was during his lifetime. More people than ever before are living in poverty surrounded by an unprecedented concentration of wealth and abundance. We are organizing to finally realize the dream of racial equality and economic justice in the United States,” said Viola Washington of New Orleans, a Katrina survivor with the New Orleans Welfare Rights Organization, a PPEHRC member group.

People in the U.S. are experiencing the worst recession since the Great Depression, with record numbers struggling for jobs, housing, and healthcare. More than 6 million Americans have been unemployed for 6 months or more, “the largest number since the government began keeping track in 1948,” according to a recent New York Times article. A record three million homes were foreclosed in 2009, with millions more expected to follow this year. Over 45 million Americans have no health care. Billions are spent on wars abroad while citizens at home lack basic social services.

“We don’t expect the changes we need to come from Washington or Wall Street, so we are building a mass movement to fight for the healthcare, housing, and jobs we need,” stated Khalilah Collins of Women in Transition, a PPEHRC member group in Louisville, Kentucky. “We are developing leaders from the ranks of the poor to create solutions ourselves and build a sustainable system.”

The Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign is a national coalition of over 125 grassroots anti-poverty groups, most of which are led directly by poor and homeless people. It is the nation’s largest anti-poverty organization that is led directly by the poor.

The March to Fulfill the Dream and the U.S. Social Forum (USSF) will connect poor people and anti-poverty groups from across the country with a special focus on education and leadership development. Every March event will promote dialogue among poor and disenfranchised people about the economic crisis and community-based solutions. “Organizing and education together can help us turn this recession into an opportunity for creative transformation,” said Larry Bresler, PPEHRC’s National Director.

The caravan, and the USSF itself, where more than 20,000 people representing progressive groups from across the U.S. and the world will gather, will provide spaces for poor people and their allies to further develop the analysis and strategy to build the movement and challenge the structures that cause poverty.

“All major social movements in history have been led by those most affected by problems. The Civil Rights, American Revolution, and Women’s Suffrage movements were all led by those most oppressed by injustice. The crisis in our economic system gets fixed when poor people are organized to lead the fight,” said Cheri Honkala, National Organizer of PPEHRC.

PPEHRC member groups have helped move homeless families into abandoned buildings, and are coordinating food distribution drives to help feed growing numbers of hungry people in both urban and rural cities. The coalition is running a national Zero Evictions and Foreclosures campaign to address what it sees as a national housing epidemic. As part of its “Programs of Survival” people are trained to resist foreclosures by using nonviolent civil disobedience to stay in their homes when other options have failed.

“There’s no more time to sit back and hope for politicians to help us. They help the banks and abandon the poor,” said Marian Kramer of the National Welfare Rights Union and Michigan Welfare Rights Organization, both PPEHRC member groups. “The present economic catastrophe calls for a wave of nonviolent civil disobedience to sweep over this nation and win the basic human rights we need to survive.”

Cheri Honkala and Son
Mark Webber Speak
Friday, March 19
7:00 PM
Tattered Cover Bookstore
(Historic Lodo)
1628 16th St, Denver
$10-$20 suggested donation

For the first time ever America’s leading organizer for the poor and homeless Cheri Honkala will be sharing the stage with her son, writer/director/actor Mark Webber speaking of their personal experiences living in poverty while often homeless, living in cars and abandoned buildings.

Cheri Honkala has been called the most endangered activist in America and has been arrested over 200 times for demonstrating, committing civil disobedience, and organizing for the human rights of America’s poor and homeless. For over 30 years she has been setting up tent cities, planning housing takeovers of vacant government buildings, leading marches and caravans, educating poor people about their rights, and giving talks on poverty in America. As a single formerly homeless mother she speaks with authenticity from her direct experience. She offers a vital perspective on the issues of poverty that you don’t hear from politicians, administrators, or even academics.

Mark Webber is Cheri’s son. He grew up in poverty in Minneapolis and the slums of North Philly. He learned to act while in school and pretending to his classmates and teachers that he wasn’t poor and homeless. As a teenager Mark began acting in movies and in 2000 he was cast in the film Snow Day starring Chevy Chase and Chris Elliot. Since then Mark has appeared in dozens of films with such notable actors as Al Pacino, Kevin Spacey, Peter Fonda, Bill Murray, and Woody Allen.

The Drugging of Our Children
Monday, November 30
7:00 PM
Hooked on Colfax
3215 E. Colfax Ave, Denver
$5 suggested donation or 1 hour volunteer

Examines the increasingly common practice of prescribing psychotropic drugs for children - including preschoolers as young as age 2 to 4 - who have been diagnosed with ADD, or ADHD.

In the absence of any objective medical tests to determine who has ADD or ADHD, doctors rely in part on standardized assessments and the impressions of teachers and guardians while the they administer leave little room for other causes or aggravating factors, such as diet, or environment.

Hence, diagnosing a child or adolescent with ADD or ADHD is often the outcome, although no organic basis for either disease has yet to be clinically proven. Psychiatrists may then prescribe psychotropic drugs for the children first without making it clear to parents that these medications can have severe side-effects including insomnia, loss of appetite, headaches, psychotic symptoms and even potentially fatal adverse reactions, such as cardiac arrhythmia.

And yet, despite these dangers, many school systems actually work with government agencies to force parents to drug their children, threatening those who refuse with the prospect of having their children taken from the home unless they cooperate. To some, this looks like institutionalized child abuse in the name of mental health, where naturally active and inquisitive children are drugged into submission while the pharmaceutical industry prospers. New York Times bestselling author, Gary Null, Ph.D., an acclaimed documentary filmmaker and syndicated radio host, investigates this potential tragedy.