Tent City: Bushville Day 4

Today preparations for the March for Economic Human Rights continued in earnest. At Bushville, throughout the day people held discussions and meetings about their shared experiences and lessons learned in bringing together poor communities to have a voice of their own.

In the morning, actor Mark Weber, rising star of Snow Days and other films, joined Bushville - to join both the cause and his mother, Cheri Honkala, Executive Director of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union.

Attention moved to the Unity 2000 march, where the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign was present to include the voice of poor people in the discussions held by the activist crowd at that event.

Afterwards, back at Bushville, plans for a celebration of music were delayed, though not stopped, by a hard rain. Most everyone hudled together under the tents, waiting for the storm to let up while some ran around trying to fix the leaks in the tarps we managed to scrounge up to build Bushville.

Late at night, the music performance came together, including a Deaf Culture Hip Hop and Dance troupe, Rene Maxwell of the Coalition to Protect Public Housing in Chicago (including "Our Fight," a memorable song of his we learned on the March of the Americas), Maurice Soulfighter of the African American Cultural Society in Springfield, Massachusetts, Tim Dowlin and Rocco of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union, Freestyle, and other inspirational speakers and performers.