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.”

The Most Endangered
Activist in America
Cheri Honkala
Thursday, March 18
7:00 PM
Mercury Cafe
2199 California St, Denver
$10-$20 suggested donation
for the Poor People’s Economic
Human Rights Campaign’s
“March to fulfill the Dream”

She has been called the most endangered activist in America. Cheri Honkala has been arrested over 200 times while demonstrating, committing civil disobedience and organizing for the human rights of America’s poor and homeless.

Cheri has lived on the streets as a single mother and knows intimately the daily struggles to obtain the most basic of necessities when your poor and homeless. Cheri will be talking about her life as a frontline activist for the poor as well as the upcoming “March to Fulfill the Dream”, a multi-racial march and caravan led primarily by poor and homeless, which will begin on April 4th in New Orleans and end on July 22 in Detroit. The march will be a continuation of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s last dream of a world without poverty.

If you want to understand the global economic system this film is a must see. It specifically deals with the work that women do and how it is measured (or not measured) in the present day economic system. In examining this issue Marilyn Waring also gives us a critical look into the distorted logic that drives the world today.

The Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign is a national grassroots consortium of anti-poverty groups, which ArgusFest is a member.

This show is to raise money for our upcoming  “March to Fulfill the Dream”.

Led by poor and homeless people and supported by musicians and artists from across America, this historic 2,300 mile march is scheduled to start in New Orleans on April 4th (the day MLK Jr. was assassinated) and arrive in Detroit on June 22nd, the first day of the 2010 U.S. Social Forum.

Poverty is everywhere and growing.  We will be marching to mobilize the poor.

Few people know that when Dr. King was assassinated in 1968 he and the SCLC were organizing a poor people’s march from Mississippi to DC. The march went forward a month later without King.

In the last years of his life King was beginning to grow a multi-racial movement to end war and poverty. Sadly, so many years after his death we still see war and more and more poverty.  Adding great insult, King’s legacy is being shamelessly manipulated and exploited by the very creators and sustainers of war and poverty.

BUT WE ARE TAKING IT BACK!

We are re-energizing his movement, which never died. Martin Luther’s King’s last dream of a world without war and poverty is not one you will hear about on TV or read about in the papers but you will hear it loud when you talk with people (most people anyway). We are going to listen to one another, share our visions, and build and reconnect our communities.

We are going to MARCH TO FULFILL THE DREAM!!!

Join ArgusFest and friend for a night of music and dancing to support this effort.

Music performance by Radical Knitting Circle, TheTanukis, Laura Goldhamer, Tyler Ludwick, Pat Dethlefs, and friends from the Bluegrass Quartet.

The Human Behavior Experiments
Monday, January 4
7:00 PM
Hooked on Colfax
3215 E. Colfax Ave, Denver
$5 suggested donation or 1 hour volunteer

Why would four young men watch their friend die, when they could have intervened to save him? Why would a woman obey phone commands from a stranger to strip-search an innocent employee? What makes ordinary people perpetrate extraordinary abuses, like the events at Abu Ghraib?

Documentarian Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room) revisits these three famous behavioral studies to explore some perennial questions about why human beings commit unethical acts under particular social conditions. After seeing this film, you may never say “bad apples” again.

The War on Kids
Monday, December 21
7:00 PM
Hooked on Colfax
3215 E. Colfax Ave, Denver
$5 suggested donation or 1 hour volunteer

The War on Kids shows how American public schools continue to become more dangerously authoritarian. In addition to failing in their mission to provide education, they erode the country’s democratic foundation by denying the most basic civil rights to youth and often resemble prisons.

In another great talk gathered by the Women’s International News Gathering Service (W.I.N.G.S.), Catherine Austin Fitts discusses her local, alternative model called Solari.

I’m turned off by her praise of productivity. I believe that most of what is praised as productive is actually destructive. I also question her endorsement of capitalism, which, by design, blindly serves capital over all else. If your goal is sustainability, human rights, and social justice, I believe that capitalism in any form is doomed to failure.

Nevertheless, I still think her perspective is crucial.

Here’s a great talk gathered from the Women’s International News Gathering Service (W.I.N.G.S.).

Lani Guinier, first black woman tenured professor at Harvard Law, has unconventional views but they are worth consideration. In this talk she argues how we lose parts ourselves and abandon the powerless as we further to seek to gain power within current power-centric structures. She argues that we should seek to ovalize power.

On a related note, there are still many who believe that Barack Obama becoming President was a giant leap forward because he is a person of color but does he still not represent the same oppressive power as before? Just as the Black South African leaders today still represent the same masters the whites did during Aparthied .

Ruins from the Rust Belt
Detroit Images
by Ric Urrutia
Thursday, December 3
7:00 PM
Mercury Cafe
2199 California St, Denver
$5 suggested donation
or 1 hour volunteer

Denver photographer/musician/labor activist, Ric Urrutia will by sharing his photography work from within Detroit’s abandoned buildings.  Intriguing, beautiful, infuriating, and inspiring, Detroit’s abandoned buildings are fossils of a once thriving industrial metropolis.  Conveniently overlooked by even the mainstream media, Detroit begs questions of our approaches to social justice and the wisdom of the free market system.

The event will also include some live acoustic music by members of Debajo del Aqua, which Ric is a member.

After Ric’s presentation we will be joined by coordinators from Emergency USA, which provides free-of-charge, high quality medical and surgical treatment to the civilian victims of war, landmines and poverty. This will be your opportunity to learn about this amazing organization and how you can get involved.

The Killing Zone
Monday, November 23
7:00 PM
Hooked on Colfax
3215 E. Colfax Ave, Denver
$5 suggested donation or 1 hour volunteer

The Killing Zone was originally broadcast in the UK on Channel 4 on 5/19/06 and shockingly revealed the daily violence and murder by the Israeli occupiers in the Gaza Strip.

Most revealing were the attacks against internationals like Rachel Corrie - an American peace activist who was crushed to death by an IDF bulldozer; Tom Hurndall - a British peace protester who was shot in the head by an IDF sniper and remained in a coma until his death on  January 13, 2004, and James Miller - a British cameraman who was shot dead by the IDF while displaying a white flag. If these internationals were so ruthlessly murdered, what is it like for the Palestinians who live there?

This film is a must see for anyone wishing to understand the true nature of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.