"While sitting in my one room apartment thinking about what I would say today, I yelled at 8 year old Frankie to get down as gun fire went off outside my window as I managed to make it into my kitchen over the homeless family sprawled out across the one tiny room that I lie in. As I opened up my $5,000 hospital bill which I have no way to pay, I managed to convince my landlord over the phone not to evict me after not paying the rent for the last two months.

As the red flashing lights of the police car passes by my window, my mind drifted to thoughts of who was being picked up tonight - was it my neighbor's son and who will be next and what is to come of my future and my country's future.

You see, where I live welfare is the number one source of income and drugs are the second and this year begins the elimination of welfare for millions of peoples. After 60 years in my country, people are no longer will be able to feed, clothe, and house themselves.

So as I turn on my television, and see the eyes of the refugees of Kosovo, I look down on the floor to the eyes of the homeless children sleeping at the edge of my bed next to me. In bed is the homeless mother who is trying to recover from her triple bypass and as I lay down I hope to get up again the next morning, cause the undeclared war occurring in the United States of America is something very real and deadly. I live in the belly of the beast where there is the highest rate of violent crimes in the world. An average of 2 million violent crimes occur annually, 6 millions victims of whom 24,000 are murdered.

In 1997, 39,720 people were killed with firearms and 110,000 others injured by firearms. In seven states, being shot is the major cause of death and injury. We also have more prisons than at the height of apartheid in South Africa. More prisons than any other place in the world.

The United States is the richest country of the world, the gap between the rich and the poor is one of the widest in the western world. The richest 1% of families today possess 40% of our nations growth.

While New York City is home to millionaires, 36,000 people daily dig in trash cans for their meals.

There are 30 million Americans, including 4.9 million elderly, who cannot afford adequate food and have to go hungry. In 1995, in California, which has enough food to feed our entire country, 5 million people did not have enough to eat.

And lastly, the massive growth of homelessness epitomizes the crisis we are now experiencing. Every winter, 1,500 homeless people are found frozen to death of the streets of the USA. To quote a wise man Gandhi - "the deadliest form of violence is poverty." And as we look to the rest of the world, we today will watch another 800 million people go hungry and that number is expected to soar and if this trend persists, 1.3 billion people are expected to live on less than $1 a day by the year 2000. Thus hundreds of millions of men, women and children will be denied not only their human rights, but indeed the most essential of all rights -- the right to be human and to be alive.

The Empire in which I live under fails to uphold human rights in my country and violates people's human rights throughout the world. We have launched more than 700 wars and acts of aggression against other countries, killing countless numbers of people with our troops and weapons.

The preparations for war are able poverty and misplaced priorities and the drive of multi-national corporations and while our government spends massive amounts on the military that results in the real loss of human life throughout the world through both openly declared wars and covert military operations. While military spending is increasing to destroy the lives of those of Kosovo, the dismantling of our safety net to keep people alive is occurring at home.

We at the KWRU are absolutely convinced that in order to really talk in terms of abolishing war, we must talk about abolishing poverty. They must go hand in hand. That we must stop describing the wars that we see as just evil guys and begin to expose the real questions of wealth and power. In order for us to achieve a world at peace, a world in which no one goes hungry and homeless we must organize those that are struggling for their very survival and this is what we're doing with our Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign. We are putting the poor of the world in a direct relationship to each other. We will no longer have the poor of one country fight the poor of another country in order to build the wealth for the richest 5% of the world. Those of us that have lived on the streets in the world, who have watched our children go hungry are beginning to get organized. We will not have a contest as to who can adjust to a lower standard of living in different parts of the world. We will work together with the Hague Appeal for Peace to abolish war by calling for economic justice for all. We believe our vision is possible. We only need to organize and live out what we all believe.

There can be no peace without economic justice. Peace is possible -- we will make it happen."