Call for a March of the Americas

Continuing the March for Our Lives

Washington DC to the United Nations, New York City

October 1999

Today, we in the United States and our brothers and sisters in every part of the world face a historic crisis. Millions in the United States are being denied their basic human rights to housing, food, education, health care and jobs at living wages and this will worsen as millions more will be cut off from receiving public assistance this year. As we in the United States experience the tragic effects of welfare reform, as well as the results of years of massive layoffs and downsizing, people all over the world are suffering from miserable poverty which is deepening every day as a result of the economic crisis and the unequal distribution of the worldís resources. As the world economic crisis develops, and as a few get richer, the misery of the majority is worsening.

At the same time, however, people all over the world are fighting back. In every corner of the world, the poor are fighting for the human right to a full and dignified life and to create a world without poverty. In every country in the world, the poor, who are the majority, are refusing to die.

For this reason, at this time of worldwide crisis and as we face a common enemy which is a system that is killing all of us, we see the need to unite not only on a national level, but on an international level. As the economy globalizes, the struggle of the poor must be an international struggle. For too long, our common enemy has attempted to divide the poor in different countries. Now, if we do not globalize from below to reclaim our world and our economic human rights, we will die.

We are proposing a March of the Americas which will take place during the month of October of 1999. Continuing the Economic Human Rights Campaign, we will carry to the court of world opinion the economic human rights violations that we are suffering all over the world. This will be the next step in this historic campaign in which poor families from all over the United States are documenting economic human rights violations in this country and are organizing ourselves against these abuses. During the month of June in 1997, poor and homeless families from all over the United States marched ten days from Philadelphia to the United Nations in New York to charge the United States government with violating the economic human rights of its people. The following year, poor families from all over the United States traveled a month in the New Freedom Bus Tour to demand our economic human rights and to let the people of the United States and the world know that the poor in this country refuse to die.

In the month of October 1999, poor and homeless families from all of the Americas, including families from Canada, the United States and Latin America will march for our lives to the seat of world government. In the third March for Our Lives to the United Nations, we will march 30 days from Washington DC to the United Nations in New York City, this time with our brothers and sisters from all over the Americas in an effort to unite our struggles for the economic human rights of all. We ask our companeros and companeras in struggle from all of the Americas to unite with us in this March of the Americas. Please contact us for more information and to make plans for this March. We invite everyone to unite in this historic March in this struggle for our lives.

This call was read and approved during the Poor People's Summit in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, October 9-11, 1998