"Building the Unsettling Force"

The 2009 Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPERHC) /Social Welfare Action Alliance (SWAA)

Joint Conference ~ July 16-21, 2009, Louisville, KY

(* Editor’s Note: The Women's Economic Agenda Project is the state wide co-host of the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign in California.  In July WEAP took a contingent to Louisville to organize, educate, and mobilize.   Here is what happened.)

"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." -Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King


LOUISVILLE, Kentucky - We came to teach, to plan, to march, to rally, and to campaign for an end to poverty.  Even in these hard times, in a land of such abundance as ours, there is no reason why anyone's basic human needs should not be met.  The social and economic justice organizations from around the country that make up the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC) met in mid-July for several days of education and strategy sessions, a solidarity march and rally, and a 'People's Fest.'   We used this national conference to shine a spotlight on our country's shameful failure to take substantive actions to end poverty and to constructively recognize and address economic human rights violations nationwide. As the conference organizers put it:

The task, then, is to figure out how we can continue to strengthen our leadership base, to organize, to mobilize, to claim our economic human rights, and to use human rights as the scaffolding for the new social contract.

Nearly four hundred people came, all focused on ending poverty and reclaiming human rights so that everyone is guaranteed the right to live with decency and dignity.  We were organizers, community supporters, and activists, representing over a dozen states nationwide.  Our organizations included: CHAM Deliverance Ministry (CA), Women's Economic Agenda Project (CA) Hip-Hop Congress (National), Kensington Welfare Rights Union (PA), Kentucky Jobs with Justice (KY), National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty (DC), New Jerusalem (CO), Rock A Mole Productions (CA),  S.T.O.P. (IL), The 8th Day Center for Justice (IL), Women in Transition (KY), Workers United (NY), M.W.R.U. (MI) and over thirty others.

Among the issues discussed in five days of large and small group meetings were:
•    The Right to Health
•    the Right to a Living Wage
•    The Right to Housing, Utilities and Water
•    The Right to Education/Youth in the Movement
•    The Right to Communication/the Media
•    The Role of Arts and Culture in Expression
•    The Local to Global Movement-Building: The International Arena and Immigration
•    The Role of Religious and Faith Based Communities
•    Policy, Legislation and the Legal Arena
•    The Role of Social Workers and Human Services in Poverty Elimination versus Poverty Management

Leadership by poor and low-income people is fundamental to building a movement to eradicate poverty. PPEHRC's member organizations work together on issues, strategies, and direct actions such as advocacy, public eduction, and awareness, in accordance with their mission statement: The Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign is committed to uniting 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, such as the rights to food, housing, health, education, communication and a living wage job. The key principles of organizations like PPEHRC, co-sponsors Social Welfare Action Alliance (SWAA), and co-hosts Women in Transition (WIT) and Spalding University, reflect a concern for social justice, peace, and building a broader social movement to secure these rights.  These principles articulate a need by social service workers for a practice and theory that responds to progressive concerns.


Undermining the Social Contract: What is the Relationship Between Society and the Individual?

A powerful presentation on the United States' "social contract" set the context for the conference.  It was given  by Richard Monje and Robert Kurtycz of Workers United on July 17th.  They said the social contract is the understanding between the people and their government that determines how people's needs are met and how social order is maintained.  Concern about the nature of today's social contract has grown in recent decades and for good reason. Demands by corporations for more profits are shredding the old social contract, which was strongest in the 50s and 60s, and today we are seeing the wholesale denial of basic human rights on a national level.  

For generations, the old social contract represented the American Dream: employer-based health care for the entire family, pension and retirement, good living wages, the opportunity to own a home and receive a higher education, and much more.   When we say the old social contract has failed us, this is not just theory and talk.  We see the very real results of a broken social contract reflected in the plight of millions of poor and low-income Americans and our government's current priorities. Workers from middle income and low income brackets, workers who helped build and maintain this country, now do not have an entitlement (meaning the right to benefit from one's own work; the right to retain promised pensions, medical, retirement benefits; the right to live with dignity) or say in what is going on. The following statistics only begin to demonstrate how the old social contract has been unraveling since the 1970's:

•    In 1980, CEOs  made 142 times the average paid worker. In 2008, CEOs made a whopping 611 times the average worker.  In comparison other countries set limits, so that CEOs only make a certain amount (such as 20 times) more than the lowest paid worker.
•    Since 1990, if the minimum wage was to increase according to increases in CEO pay, the national minimum wage would be $40.49/hour today.  It is $7.25/hour today instead.
•    Today, Fifty three percent of workers have no pensions
•    Today, there are 150 million underinsured and 47 million uninsured (of which 9 million are children)
•    Social Security benefits are now on average $900 a month per person and are quickly decreasing whereas the cost of living has steadily risen nationwide
•    Since 2008 there have been 300,000 foreclosures per month, a seventy five percent increase in foreclosures each year since 2005
•    There are 2 million people in jail today (which is more than China, North Korea, Iraq, etc.)
•    Military spending is fifty four percent of the US government's budget today whereas social welfare funding makes up only one to two percent of government spending
•    The experts predict unemployment will keep rising and stay high even after the economy is officially declared "in recovery" from the latest recession.

The hardest hit, the people the  safety net was designed to catch, are slipping through the widening corporate loopholes.  With them fall the tattered remnants of America's broken social contract.  A new social contract is needed to protect all the people companies are throwing away.  Another world is possible, but we will not gain it by fighting within the framing set by corporations and monied interests.  We as a people can negotiate a new social contract but only if we have our own framing, one in which poor people are not just left to argue among themselves for 'scraps.'  At the center of this framework we need education and two requisite elements: leadership and a vision of treating everyone with the human dignity they deserve by securing everyone's basic economic human rights.

Why is all this turmoil happening?  The old social contract that is now being torn apart was intimately tied to the social welfare system that was created in Europe in the sixteenth century.  It was intended both to meet the most basic human needs of a population moving from rural life into the cities, and to control that unsettled population. It was created by capitalism as an essential part of the pact between labor and capital.

Towards the end of the 20th century, we began a transition from industrial to electronic capitalism, which has fundamentally changed the need for labor.  The old social contract  came about because industrial capitalism needed labor - large numbers of workers:  People worked, mainly to produce goods, and in exchange, were paid a wage to live sufficiently and consume the goods they helped create.  For a time, especially in the mid 20th century, many (but not all) who worked were able to benefit from the social contract, meaning they worked and earned a wage that allowed them to survive comfortably.

Now this new system of electronically-controlled globalized production and distribution means far more goods are produced by far fewer people, the US laborer can no longer be assured of selling his or her labor to meet human needs or to make a living wage.  This has resulted in a new class of poor, masses of people who have found that their hope of exchanging their labor for the goods and services they need for survival can't be fulfilled in today's economy.  Today, when the media talks about the "global financial crisis", what they are really talking about is the destruction in the old social contract.

These facts gave the conference an important challenge:  As the new social contract is being worked out, we face new dangers and opportunities.  Perhaps for the first time in history, we have the capacity to end poverty, to meet human needs, to guarantee human rights.  If we can take action together, this can be done.  If we do not take up this challenge, the new social contract will be devised by and for the benefit of those who believe that '"if you are not exploitable, you are expendable." In other words, we need to build the unsettling force that Martin Luther King Jr. talked about and began with his Poor People's Campaign over 40 years ago. We need to build a movement to secure everyone's economic human rights.  


Arenas of Struggle: The Right to Health!

After the social contract presentation, the conference immediately broke up into arenas of struggle, or community-wide dialogue sessions, intended to explore further the historical and contemporary context of the individual, society, and poverty.  We concluded we need a new class rights movement to meet the new circumstances, and economic restructuring in the twenty-first century with a vision of securing economic justice and security.   The Women's Economic Agenda Project's Executive Director, Ethel Long-Scott, and Community Homeless Alliance Ministry's Sandy Perry led the "Right to Health Arena of Struggle."  With an emphasis on education, they discussed the need to fight for both health care as a human right and poverty elimination, if we are to successfully secure the right to health.

"Our long term goals need to be ending poverty, privilege, and oppression.  Without the right to health care, the right to thrive, there can be no poverty elimination but only quick fixes: poverty management."
-Ethel Long-Scott, WEAP

To say that everyone has the right to live with dignity implies one equal standard for all: this means health care, housing, access to food, education, water, communication, etc.  This idea leads to the definition of "Health Care as a Human Right" used by WEAP and modeled on the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights.    

Where Does the Right to Health Come From?
The right to health was first recognized in 1948 in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

The UDHR mentions medical care specifically in Article 25:

(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
(2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

This means that not only is medical care a right, but so are all the things that contribute to good health.  Good health means a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, not just the absence of disease.  Medical care is only one of the things individuals need to be healthy; a few others are shelter, healthy food, a clean environment, autonomy, and the right to partisipate in the civil and democratic processes, which govern this nation.


"What do we want? HEALTH CARE! When do we want it? NOW!"

The arena of struggle session lead by WEAP and CHAM also looked at some of the myths that Americans are up against, such as the idea that we do not have social and economic classes.  This myth breaks down when you think about what happens if you get disconnected from a job today, which often results in loss of health insurance, unless you are fortunate enough to be able to afford private insurance.  This uninsured, and sometime underinsured, status leads to cruel exposure, something many Americans have experienced, as over 50% of bankruptcies are due to un-payable medical bills.   Key to understanding the health crisis today are the sky rocketing costs of health care and the enormous profits made in the health and pharmaceutical industries.

Solutions were emphasized, especially single payer, universal health care, where the government would act as the insurer instead of hundreds of private insurance companies.  Single payer is the only reform that will really secure health care as a human right and help our country out of its colossal debt.  In  short, the most sensible solution would be a Medicare-for-All system (extending current Medicare to the entire US population).  Yet, Long-Scott and Perry also talked about how single payer legislation would not be enough since it is impossible to simply lobby reform into existence.  Instead, we need strategy, a community-base, and a movement that is broad, politicized and lead by the poor and those most affected by our current health care crisis.


The Right to Health Workshop

A second presentation by the Women's Economic Agenda Project, a workshop on the Right to Health  on July 18th, shared WEAP's education and teaching methodologies.  It debunked a number of the myths surrounding the present administration's proposed health care reform.  Here are some of the myths and facts tackled.

MYTH: "Universal Single Payer Health Care would be too disruptive to implement; America has a tradition of employer based health care and we must work within this framework"
FACT: A model for Universal Health Care was seen with the implementation of Medicare in the 1960's; within one year 90 percent of eligible individuals were receiving coverage.  The old 'tradition' of employer-based health care has all but disapeared.  Those employers who do offer insurance do so at costs so high many are still unable to afford it.  This framework is no more. We do however have a model for the Public Option/Private care plan proposed by the president; it has been tried in seven states and failed in seven states from Washington to Maine.

MYTH: "Public Option is the only option available today"
FACT: Legislation for Universal Single Payer Health Care has been in existence since the 1970's.  In fact, National Single Payer Health Care (today 'HR 676') has been introduced into Congress and State Single Payer legislation has passed twice in California and was vetoed twice by the governor as recently as 2007.  

"There is another option, the only option: one standard of care for all - equal in quality!"

MYTH: "Universal Single Payer Health Care is socialized medicine and would allow the government to dictate what kind of treatment American's receive"
FACT: Again, the financing of universal single payer health care would be the responsibility of the government but care would remain private.  This is similar to how Medicare works in this country. Doctors are in private practice and are paid on a fee-for-service basis from government funds. The government does not own or manage medical practices or hospitals.  Single Payer would be anything but disruptive; it would allow doctors, nurses and care givers to do their jobs without having to worry about the security of their jobs!

MYTH: "The Individual Mandate is universal health care"
FACT: Universal health care is not a term to be used synonymously with a plan which criminalizes the poor because they can't afford to pay for health care, but one which represents coverage for all, a human right: the Right to Health!  An Individual Mandate would require every U.S. resident to purchase health insurance by law and would impose fines upon those who could not afford to.  Historically, mandates have failed to cover everyone, and an individual health insurance mandate would act as a subsidy to the insurance industry, enriching profits and CEO salaries while delivering very little to the "customer" in the form of escalating costs and stripped-down health plans.


Stop the War on the Poor!

Whether it was in a workshop or in the slogans shouted out on the streets of Louisville during the solidarity march and rally or in the form of poetry and music performed throughout the conference, the theme of stopping the war on the poor was reiterated again and again.  As stories were told and problems discussed, an important silence was broken and a constant declaration was made that all people deserve to have access to basic human necessities: to quality and affordable health care, education, housing, food, and living wage jobs.   These rights are guaranteed by the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, created in 1948 and since replicated in several international and domestic documents.  Quality and affordable health care, a roof over your head, and a safe place to sleep are all rights, not privileges of the few.  In one of the more touching moments of the conference, a young, homeless woman went up to the microphone on day three and strongly declared, despite shyness and emotional turmoil, that "we can't have any hesitation anymore because every single life counts."

"Why do we have to negotiate and settle on what we have? We need to build a society that delivers on a future for our children!"

The Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign is fighting for solutions that integrate compassion and justice while including everyone, such as single payer, universal health care.  Our short term goals are getting food and shelter for our friends, family, and loved ones.  Our long term goals need to be ending poverty not just 'managing' it.
•    We need to continue broadening and politicizing the movement.
•    We need to use more direct actions; do not be silent!
•    We need testimonies that are not just about the suffering but also about possible solutions
•    We have to unite!