Representatives of KWRU and Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign Participate in national Latin America Solidarity Conference

The weekend of March 16 - 19, representatives of KWRU took part in the Latin America Solidarity Conference in Chicago. We were excited to join with movements of the poor and organizations committed to economic justice from throughout Latin America and the US to strategize about fighting for economic and other human rights throughout the Americas. We participated in several working groups, making the connections between growing misery, drugs and police and military repression against the poor in the US and Latin America, and developing links between the organized poor in the US and Latin America.

We announced Three Days of Global Action to End Poverty from August 3-5 and invited all present to participate or to organize events in their communities to be publicized internationally.

During lunch on Saturday at the conference, we spoke and showed a video highlighting the efforts of poor and homeless families across the US to organize themselves and to unite the poor of the Americas.  Members of the religious community, organizations of the poor from Latin America, and representatives of a number of organizations and individuals from across the United States came up to us to share their thoughts on how important it is that the poor in the United States are getting organized and beginning to develop direct relationships with the organized poor of Latin America and the world.

On Sunday afternoon, KWRU leaders Esther Ortiz and Mariluz Gonzalez, both formerly homeless mothers, joined Rene Maxwell and other members of the Chicago Coalition to Protect Public Housing (a member of the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign), to participate in an event held by several churches to celebrate a recent victory in which people won their right to keep their housing because they organized against the city's attempts to demolish it.

Uniting the poor of the United States and El Salvador

A highlight of the weekend was formalizing and celebrating a new sister relationship between the KWRU and the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign and two organizations of the poor in El Salvador, PROGRESO and CRIPDES. This relationship has been facilitated by the national organization, United States-El Salvador Sister Cities, of which the KWRU is now a member.  While in Chicago, we had the chance to meet with the national president of CRIPDES, and with the leadership of US-El Salvador Sister Cities, to discuss this new relationship of unity between the poor in the US and the poor in El Salvador.  

CRIPDES - the Association of Rural Communities for the Development of El Salvador - is a 17 year old organization led by Salvadoran peasants who have been fighting for decades to reclaim and stay on their land, to ensure their rights to organize, and to have decent housing, education and health care.  Now, CRIPDES represents more than   100, 000 people in communities throughout El Salvador.  As organized poor communities with a clear social and political analysis of the root causes of poverty and injustice  in their country, the communities of CRIPDES have played a leading role in the  Salvadoran struggle for social change. It is their organization and political  education that has allowed them to overcome attacks by death squads, the  Salvadoran and the U.S. military, and global economic policies and  transform their reality from one of landless peasants working for a miserable  wage, to small landowners living in community and creating and participating in  a national movement that provides a model for survival and struggle for poor  communities in El Salvador and beyond. PROGRESO is a regional chapter of CRIPDES.

Globalization from Below: Building an International Movement for Human Rights, Led by the Poor

During our time with Lorena Martinez, the national president of CRIPDES, and with Wanusa Pereira Dos Santos, representing the Landless Workers Movement (MST) of Brazil, we had interviews, a speaking event and meetings to further strategize about uniting the poor internationally. We held a forum, entitled "Globalization from Below: Building an International Movement for Economic Human Rights, Led By the Poor," in which representatives of the Landless Workers Movement (MST) from Brazil, the Chicago Coalition to Protect Public Housing, CRIPDES, the Kensington Welfare Rights Union, and the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign spoke of the need to unite the poor across all boundaries. Each speaker, leaders of movements of the poor from the United States, El Salvador and Brazil, spoke of the life and death struggles which each of our organizations and movements are facing.

Rene Maxwell of the Chicago Coalition to Protect Public Housing, an organization belonging to the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, spoke first. He talked about the efforts of public housing residents in Chicago to organize to fight the destruction of public housing, which is leaving tens of thousands homeless. In closing, he shared with us a moving and very appropriate new song, entitled" When We Stand Together."

Lorena Martinez, the president of CRIPDES, spoke about the need for building a movement based in the international unity of the poor, "globalization from below," and about how important it that the poor in the United States be organized: "It's time for us (Salvadorans and Latin Americans) to offer solidarity and support to the movement of the poor in United States."

Cheri Honkala, the Executive Director of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union (KWRU) and the national spokesperson of the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, spoke about the necessity of building a movement of the poor for economic human rights in the United States, and of the urgency of this movement linking up with movements of poor around the world. Tara Colon, a homeless mother of three and a leader of KWRU talked about her own current struggle to house her family, while also organizing other poor and homeless families everyday to fight for a better future for themselves and their children.

Wanusa Pereira Dos Santos, spoke for the Landless Workers Movement of Brazil (MST), which represents 350,000 landless families living on reclaimed land throughout Brazil. The MST is one of the largest movements of the poor in the world. Wanusa spoke of the MST's conviction that a successful movement must be based in the organizing of the poor, and that political education and the struggle to reclaim the basic neccesities of life must be at the foundation of the movement. She also discussed the need for the poor from Latin America, the United States and different parts of the world to come together to study, to strategize and to unite to build an international movement of the poor to put an end to the economic policies that are killing the poor everywhere.

After a long weekend of important meetings, we returned to Philadelphia to face our own struggles to survive as poor mothers in the United States and to continue building this movement by organizing other poor families in Kensington and Philadelphia and by linking up with poor families and organizations across the country and the world.  We returned taking very seriously our responsibility to build a movement of the poor in the United States, and to link this movement up with movements of the poor worldwide, so that we can end once and for all the violence of poverty in this world of plenty. 

Pictures will be up soon.