3 Days of Global Action - Day 2

On Saturday, the second day of global action, more events took place. We received statements of support from the organization Cry of the Excluded and PROGRESO-CRIPDES from El Salvador.

On Saturday, members of the KWRU took a reality tour highlighting the wealth in Philadelphia in contrast to the previous day's tour that focused on the city's poverty.

The tour visited the headquarters of Rohm Haas, a pharmaceutical corporation that employees 18,000 people worldwide and has annual sales of $7 billion. The CEO of this corporation makes $5 million ayear. ( Like many corporations, Rohm Haas donates money to civic foundations which allow it to influence what happens in the area according to its interests.)

Another stop was in an area of expensive storefronts in Philadelphia's Center City where the rich are able to buy items from such names as Prada, Bebe, and Banana Republic. Some businesses in this area are very reliant on tourist dollars and have tried to make the homeless dissappear by criminalizing homelessness - it's now a crime to sleep outside or sit down for over twenty minutes. These businesses want to hide the poverty rather than
truly addressing the issues, to ensure their own high profits.

The tour stopped at Episcopal Academy in Philadelphia's suburbs, where Philadelphia's wealthy are able to educate their children grades K-12 at a rate of $11,000 to $15,000 each year. This is in stark contrast to Philadelphia's public schools, which are now questioning whether they will have the funding available to open school this fall.

The tour highlighted the disparity between the rich and the poor in Philadelphia, and discussions raised the bigger picture: that the wealth of the seven richest billionaires could end poverty worldwide. In a world where 1.5 billion people are trying to survive on less than $1 a day, the concentration of resources in a few peoples' hands is threatening billions ofpeople's ability to simply live. Philadelphia is a good example of the contrast between the CEOs who earn millions annually and who send their children to private schools, and the people they employ who earn $6/hour and who might not have a school to send their children to this fall.