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Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism 4.2 (2004) 108-113



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Legislative Tactics in a Movement Strategy:

The Economic Human Rights-Pennsylvania Campaign


The Kensington Welfare Rights Union (KWRU) is a membership organization of poor and homeless families and others, like myself, who are not currently living in poverty but know that it can and must be ended. Founded in Philadelphia in 1991 by five "welfare moms," KWRU works from local to global levels to build a movement to end poverty based in the unity and leadership of the poor—that is, we are consciously multiracial, focus heavily on leadership development, and our program is rooted in the analysis and vision of the organized poor. The members of our policy-making body, the War Council (because there is a war on the poor in this country), are drawn primarily from the ranks of the poor. We have no paid staff; our core leaders get housing and a stipend when we have funds, which is not all the time.

KWRU is the lead organization in the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC) which is a national and indeed international network of grassroots organizations that have come together with a particular mission—to end poverty in the United States and, in fact, in the world. We are about building a mass movement to end poverty—not [End Page 108] "reducing" or "ameliorating," and certainly not "managing" poverty. As a KWRU leader often points out, "Reducing poverty sounds great until you ask a poor mother which of her children she's going to leave in poverty. Only ending poverty is acceptable." So, in concert with many other organizations, we are building a mass movement to end poverty and using an economic human rights framework to do so.

One of our many projects is the Economic Human Rights Pennsylvania Campaign (EHR-PA), which contributes to building that mass movement and is eminently replicable. At KWRU, the Education Committee is at the core of KWRU action because education is key to any successful social movement and everyone in our organization is expected to study. I chair the Social Work Strategy Subcommittee of the Education Committee. This sub-committee coordinates the EHR-PA, which is a joint project of KWRU/PPEHRC and the Pennsylvania Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers as well as visionary state representative, Larry Curry, a Democratic legislator from a heavily Republican district just north of Philadelphia. As we shall see, the EHR-PA campaign is a child of analysis and opportunity.

First, the analysis: in order to build this EHR-PA mass movement, we need at least three things. We need a new consciousness. We need new relationships. And we need new grassroots organizations with leaders that can pull together this kind of movement. One instrument we use to achieve these objectives is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, particularly articles 23, 25 and 26 which include the rights to food, clothing, housing, health, education and work at livable wages. I will return below to how we are using this instrument.

Another point of analysis: the EHR-PA campaign uses legislative tactics to accomplish strategic objectives, but I want to make clear that we are not seeking legislative solutions to poverty. At this point in history, the primary work of legislative bodies is not to meet the needs of people but to produce weapons of mass destruction called policies and the budgets to deliver them. These policies are placing increasing numbers of people on the edge of poverty—just one plant closure, uninsured illness, or divorce away—or working two and three jobs to keep up. These folks must be included in a mass movement because their financial security and human rights are circling the economic drain. The concept of rights has historically moved the people of the United States, and the legislative process still has [End Page 109] credibility with most of them. So while we are not seeking a legislative solution to poverty, we are using legislative tactics to organize...

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