August 15, 2003
Willie Baptist, Education Director of the KWRU

Hello everybody!
Before getting into my talk for this evening, I would like to briefly comment on the major electricity Blackout that occurred last night in the Northeast particularly in New York City. I would like to urge all of you to use your acquired analytical and research skills to make a multifaceted study of all the lessons to be learned about the Blackout especially those concerning the behavior of the American people. What I was particularly moved about was that the values of caring and collectivity were on heroic display last night. Many people went out of their way to DO FOR the other guy and not to DO the other guy for mere personal gain. This was in stark contrast to the usual news media images, to the constant conditioning about fearing the other guy, about emphasizing the incidents of extreme selfishness and individualism.

In my involvement with the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign I have had the opportunity through national bus tours and marches to visit "downsized" and impoverished communities that are not going without for just a day or so but going without everyday. I saw the same thing last night that I have seen in my visits. I saw the basic decency of the American people. This is very important for especially those of us who see ourselves as social workers. This is very important because of all the competing values in the American psychology and personality we have to emphasize and appeal to those values of caring and collectivity that will allow us to push society forward, to make this nation a better nation. Do people hear me!?

I was given 20 minutes to talk to you this evening. For those of you who know me, this is more than a minor miracle as it usually takes me 20 minutes to an hour to say hello. So I ask you to indulge me as I attempt the impossible.

My name is Willie Baptist, like a Baptist Church. I am formerly homeless. Today I am semi-homeless in that I am currently living at one of the Human Rights Houses of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union with other homeless families.

The Kensington Welfare Rights Union is a multi-racial organization of poor and homeless families. It has been in existence for 12 years now. It is based in Kensington, North Philadelphia which is THE POOREST community in the entire state of Pennsylvania. It is basically 1/3 poor white, 1/3 poor Latino, and 1/3 poor black. Kensington like many other communities has succumbed to the pressures of the new global economy. It is a de-industrialized community in terms of severe job loss. Presently there are two main sources of income-one is public relief (i.e., welfare) and the second is the Drug Trade. Poverty wage jobs provide the only other sources. In many respects, Kensington is a microcosm of the accelerating growth nationwide of a NEW kind of poverty. Major problems of malnutrition, S. L. J.'s (which means "shitty little jobs"), lay offs, homelessness, and the spreading healthcare terrorism do not discriminate according to color, to gender, to age. Nor increasingly do they discriminate as to whether or not you have a college degree.

The Mission of the KWRU is to unite and organize the poor across the color lines (and every other line) so as to awaken the American people to the need to eliminate poverty in the richest country in the world.

I have a wife that I love dearly and I am a father of three. My youngest son is currently with me on the new Poor People's March for Economic Human Rights from Mississippi to Washington DC (I just arrived here from that March and in the next few days I will return) I am extremely proud of my son especially because he is playing a leadership role in this Poor People's March across seven southern states.

I attended Pepperdine University when it was in South Central Los Angeles, California - near the community of Watts where I was raised. I did not graduate from that University but I did graduate from the University of Ad-ver-si-ty, from the Schools of the Streets. You MUST know that the knowledge you get from life experiences is very important. Street knowledge tied together with book knowledge is the best kind of knowledge.

I am 55 years old. I am the Education Director of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union. I think I was selected as Education Director, because I have made the most mistakes. We call mistakes lessons. We in the KWRU value all of our experiences and mistakes as well as those of others. They serve as the basis of the organization's Education Curriculum and Training Program. I am also the Co Coordinator of the "internetted" University of the Poor, the educational arm of the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign. The Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign is a national network made up of nearly 100 organizations mostly poor and homeless from both the rural and urban areas of the country.

Because of the New Conditions Today, I Consider Myself a Social Worker of Sorts
I see myself as a social worker because I believe a social worker today is someone who strives to make society work for everybody and not just for a few individuals. (I repeat: I see myself as a social worker because I believe a social worker today is someone who strives to make society work for everybody and not just for a few individuals.) I see myself as a social worker because I have committed my life to a social struggle to abolish poverty altogether and forever and not simply to "reduce" IT or manage IT.

In this sense, social work is not simply what I do. It is who I am! And who I am has been shaped by the many great and glaring contradictions in our society, great and glaring contradictions between the founding Ideals of our nation on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the growing insane and inhumane reality of our country today.

Allow me to give two examples: 1) on the persistent growth of homelessness and 2) on the collapsing US healthcare system.

1) Homelessness continues to grow. It has now reached over 4 million annually with women and children suffering the fastest rate of growth. There is a TERRIFYING image that can never be erase from my memory. It is definitely among the my major life experiences that have shaped who I am today. I was asked a while back to go to Chicago, Illinois to share our organizing experiences in Philadelphia to some homeless brothers and sisters. It was one of the coldest winters in Chicago. You know that in Chicago the almighty hawk flies, Mr. Wind, and the wind-chill factor pushed weather temperature far below freezing. As a deadly testimony to the horrible conditions of the shelter system, homeless people prefer taking their chances outdoors. After exchanging our organizing experiences we divided into outreach teams. You know you can die in seconds when exposed to those temperatures. Yet we found homeless men and women in parks, vacant lots, under viaducts huddled around huge garbage cans heated up with burning wood. My team went to these areas to talk to people about their condition and to get them out of the cold. We happened upon a number of abandoned houses. We came to this one house and opened the door. A homeless gentleman was sitting on a chair with his back facing us. We call out to him a few times. He didn't move. As we approached him, it became obvious that he had frozen to death. And what, more than anything, left an indelible impression on my soul was that it took a time for the four of us to wedge him from the chair. And with absolute horror we could see pieces of his skin left frozen to the arms of the chair. THIS IS HAPPENING IN AMERICA, the richest, the most technologically developed and most abundance producing COUNTRY IN THE WORLD! Researchers have said that the US has the capacity to produce a prefab house in 45 minutes and yet we have hundreds of homeless men, women, and children freezing to death every winter.

2) The growing healthcare crisis in the richest country is the greatest and most glaring contradiction. This country spends over $5,000 per person, twice that of any other advanced country and yet in the last year, 71 million went without health insurance - of those 18,500 died while a rich few lived and profited in greater greed. I attended a Workers' Memorial on Health and Safety a while back and it was keynoted by a Fireman who along with other Firemen participated in the rescue of the victims of the Twin Tower catastrophe. He stated that he wanted the American people to know that the firemen who risked their lives and the families of those who lost their lives are deeply honored by the people calling them HEROES. They wanted the American people to know, however, that they were only doing their job. But they also wanted to tell the politicians to stop calling them "heroes" while at the same time TAKING AWAY their healthcare benefits!

Our founding creed states, "We hold these truths to be self evident that all men [all human beings!] are created equal. That they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them are [the rights to] life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…" Paraphrase: Governments are constituted on the basis of the consent of the people to ensure those rights. And when Government abdicates, it is our right and responsibility to make it right.

The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. 35 years ago talked about the country having THEN the existing economic means to end poverty but was blocked by the lack of political will. "But a man," he said, "without a job or an income has no life, nor liberty, nor the possibility for the pursuit of happiness."

I focus on Martin Luther King, Jr. because with our current Poor People's March through the South we are commemorating the 40th Anniversary this year of the historic March on Washington in 1963 where he gave his unforgettable "I Have A Dream" Speech as well as the 35th Anniversary of his historic1968 Poor People's Campaign.

The South is the most impoverished region of the United States. Marks, Mississippi is one of the most downtrodden and forgotten towns in the Deep South. This was the case back then when Doctor King just before his death chose Marks, Mississippi as the place to begin the Historic March of the 1968 Poor People's Campaign. Today, the conditions of life in Marks, Mississippi have gotten worse. When recently we began our New March there the local leaders told us that every 46 minutes a child in Marks, Mississippi is born into poverty. Every 46 minutes a child in Marks, Mississippi is born ill housed and ill fed.

These problems are becoming socially endemic. They are not INDIVIDUAL problems. This is NOT the case of individuals failing society but one of society failing individuals and their children and families. I think that this is what the Great Social Worker, Bettha Capen Reynolds meant when she wrote, "Social work, we feel, ought somehow to lead to more social approaches to solving problems that beset individuals and families."

I think that just as Bertha Capen Reynolds walked her talk, Martin Luther King LIVED the lessons SHE taught. Martin Luther King indeed committed his life TO MAKING SOCIETY WORK FOR EVERYBODY. And this is what made him dangerous to the Socio-Economic Status Quo. And this is what got him killed. After much study of his life and times I am strongly convinced that his great legacy can be seen as a brave and devoted example of a social worker.

What is the Role of Social Workers Today?
I think that there is a strong argument for the position that Martin Luther King's life can serve today as a Model for Social Workers.

The last years of his life are the least discussed and most misunderstood. Here I contrast my naïve and narrow black isolationism at that time to his brilliant intellectualism. This brilliance combined with his unquestioned bravery enabled Dr. King to move, in his understanding and commitment, ahead of his time. His launching of the 1968 Poor People's Campaign anticipated the major social tasks of our time. I've studied the transcripts of the MLK Assassination Trial held in the circuit court of Memphis, Tennessee, December 1999. I was appalled at the obvious Media Blackout of this trial. It is unconscionable that few people have heard of what is undoubtedly one of the most important Trials in US History. (See excerpts from Transcripts, appendix of the KWRU STRATEGY PAPERS in the Library at www.universityofthepoor.org; see also the King Family Attorney in this Trial, William F Pepper's "Order to Kill" and his "Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King, Jr.") The trial proved that he was not killed by a "fanatical white racist." Than, indeed, his assassination involved the complicity of elements from all levels of government with assistance from Major Media.

In the few months before he was killed, Doctor King, in one of his 4 lectures to the Canadian Broadcast, stated,
"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."

Today the eyes of the American people are being kept closed like those of a sleeping giant on the great problems of extreme wealth and extreme poverty. This is done by especially those who own and control Major Media. They have been reducing our stories to stereotypes and our tragedies to statistics, our miseries to depersonalized numbers that numb any real human concern or compassion. The whole truth is NOT being told about our plight nor our fight. This is because they are afraid that the truth would be too upsetting and "unsettling" and wake up the complacent giant.

There are many examples of poor people through united actions showing their potential of becoming "A New and Unsettling Force". Let me give you one: Back in the mid-1980s when homelessness had emerged as a new mass phenomenon across the country, homeless men and women in Philadelphia, PA begin to organize themselves. The indignities of not having access to showers in shelters or anywhere became among the first controversial issues. Contrary to what the Media would have you think many homeless people have jobs. According to a recent report from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) some 44% of the homeless population are employed at NOT-ENOUGH-TO-PAY-RENT wages. One of the most degrading and defeating things is to go to work or seek a job having not taken a shower for some time. So the homeless organizers pull together a meeting to discuss what actions to take to bring attention to and solve this insulting and inhumane condition.

I don't know how many of you are aware of Love Park in downtown Philadelphia. It is place where there exist this big fountain which showers water that cascades down to entertain the "yuppie" and "buppie" tourists as they are "doing" lunch. Now imagine 150 to 200 homeless people walking toward Love Park with towels on their shoulders. When they reach the fountain showers they at once begin to unrobe… To make a long story short, the media and the police came at once. Much drama and city embarrassment were created and the homeless won access to showers! !

Another example is that the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign has taken up the most disregarded part of the legacy of Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. We are presently carrying out in his name a Poor People's March for Economic Human Rights to bring attention to continuing growth of poverty and homelessness in the richest country on earth. WE ARE a group of poor and homeless "Social Workers," if you will, marching in his footsteps through the South.

Our goals, like his goals, is to unite the poor across color lines to awaken the nation so as to put an end to ALL poverty WORLDWIDE and thereby make our nation a better nation. So far we have marched through the Mississippi Delta in the Deep South, through the surrounding and Appalachian states of Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia. I will be getting back to the March when it has reached North Carolina and heads toward Virginia. It is scheduled to arrive in Washington D. C. on August 23rd where a Tent city (named Bushville) will be set up for a week. Support us and join us. Keep track of us on our web site, www.kwru.org.

Finally, I come to my Conclusion.
Betha Capen Reynolds raised an unanswered question,
"The real choice before us as social workers is whether we are to be passive or active. Shall we let the existing forms of social work, full of contradictions as they are, shape us to their mold? Or shall we become conscious of our own part in making a profession which will stand forthrightly for human well-being, including the right to be an active citizen?"

We can make social work the most lofty profession provided we make it be about the elevation of the human condition by making society work for everybody and not just a few individuals. There is nothing more lofty than that. Each one of you graduates can contribute to this process by making your life meaningful, by making your life be about the elevation of the human condition through MAKING SOCIETY WORK FOR EVERYBODY AND NOT JUST FOR A FEW INDIVIDUALS.

My name is Willie Baptist. I got the nickname, Willie, from the famous baseball star, Willie Mays and because I was very much into sports particularly baseball … Usually athletes have little to say with any great substance. However, one fearless social catalyst, Jackie Robinson made one of the most profound and powerful summary of the millions of years of human existence and ethical experience: He said, "A life is NOT important EXCEPT in the impact that it has on other lives." Please, think about that in your life after graduation!

Thanks for having me, thanks for listening!