'LINK UP AND BUILD A MOVEMENT':

CAMPAIGN WILL DOCUMENT ECONOMIC

HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN U.S.

by KWRU Executive Director Cheri Honkala

September 1997

We have to link up and build a movement. We really want to encourage linking up with anybody and everybody who is about fighting about economic human rights in this country. The majority of hate groups reside here in Pennsylvania. And most people that are poor in Pennsylvania, or that are receiving governmental assistance in this country, are white. If we don't organize them, somebody else will.

We need to go to the places that nobody else wants to go to. We need to talk to anybody and everybody that is poor, and I mean poor in a broad definition. I don't care if you are working at Wendy's, or telemarketing, or if you are a welfare recipient or delivering newspapers. If you are part of that 95 percent that doesn't own anything, you need to link up to this growing movement for human rights. At the same time, we know that this movement needs to be led by those that are most affected, those that have nothing to lose by fighting for absolute freedom from hunger and want in this country. We need to put those folks into a relationship with each other in the same room.

At the same time, by doing this and by building this movement for economic human rights in this country, we will be sending society a strong message, that we have exhausted every means domestically. We have tried to utilize the city services, testified before the legislature at a local, state, and federal level and that we are serious, that the human-rights violations happening in this country are just as serious as what is happening in Brazil or Africa, or any other place in the world.

We will begin to shine a light on the economic human rights violations that this country does not want to talk about. By linking up internationally, we can break our isolation. We have to begin to forge a movement that will link us up with poor and homeless families that are struggling for their survival throughout the entire world.

Beginning on December 10, we want to encourage people to do something, anything, to call attention to the fact that December 10 is the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We want to demand that we focus on the economic human rights, particularly at a time in this country when they are ending the safety net.

We want you to document how many women, children, and men are going to live in houses this coming winter without any heat, without any hot water to bathe their children; document people that die in house fires as a result of resorting to other means of obtaining heat; document the people that die in houses that collapse because they didn't have access to decent and affordable housing; document the people dying on the streets as a result of being homeless; document the people that lose their teeth because they didn't have access to dental care; document the people that are going to go deaf because they didn't have the money for amoxicillin for their children.

This government cannot get away with telling the majority of people of this country that they don't have a right to live. We are proposing that in June we gather together all of the documentation of economic human rights violations. We will take our Freedom from Unemployment, Hunger and Homelessness Bus. It's a new freedom movement, it's a freedom movement calling for the end of want and hunger and homelessness in this country. We will take the bus around to strategically important areas of the country of every race, color, nationality, religious grouping, you name it. And we will take this bus into the poorest districts of as many states as we can during June.

We are encouraging people to organize minimarches and tribunals in the poorest districts in their states so that the poor and homeless families in that district can speak to the conditions and what is happening in this country. We also want them to speak to who is responsible for these conditions. We will then collect this documentation, get back on the bus and go to another area and participate in yet another march. We will gather on the last day in June on the New Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge, and carry that information in a coffin over the bridge to the United Nations for a massive demonstration.

It has to be about organizing, not mobilizing. For a yearlong campaign, if you do not organize and educate folks they will not continue to stay in the struggle.

To bring this movement to everybody that is out there, we in this room have to see ourselves as leaders. As we take to the ghettos, the barrios, the mountains, we have got to get people out of their intoxication in every sense of the word, to get people to put down the drugs, the alcohol, the television, and the despair.

If we can't see ourselves as leaders, to nurture them, walk them through their pain, teach them that there is a better future and give them a vision for a new America, we will lose them to their coma or to the jail. But if we can inspire them to get off their ass and to get involved, then we can win the fight because we are the majority of the people and we can truly take our country back.

I am incredibly inspired, and I am excited because of the amount of people that are in this room and that you have been working so hard over the last few years. We cannot get discouraged. Here in this room is a beautiful ray of hope. And if we can figure out how to take what we have got in this room and multiply it, I really think that we are going to win.

EXCERPTS FROM THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS

Article 23

(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.

(2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.

(3) Everyone has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection. ...

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. ...

Article 26

(1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit. ...