June 15 Organizing Update

The organizing committee of KWRU began at 6:30 AM today with picking up 2 van loads of food that normally would have been thrown away.

At one of our members homes, the food was distributed within a couple of hours.

Other members of the organizing committee also went to register more KWRU members as officially homeless at the Office for Emergency Shelter and Services (OESS). They arrived for their 10:00 appointment but the staff at OESS did not show up.

By 11:00 AM our office was filled with people with problems ranging from evictions, food stamps being cut off, a woman who was denied medication and children being taken away from their families.

At the same time other members proceeded to organize in the Philadelphia welfare offices. When they arrived at the Kent district welfare office, they discovered that a woman had been waiting in the welfare office for over an hour and a half and was going to miss her appointment to apply for a job. When the office refused to let KWRU members speak to a supervisor they asked for a District Administrator. When they were denied access to the District Administrator they proceeded to the back room to find the District Administrator chanting "Where's the District Administrator!?" Within minutes the woman was able to see her caseworker.

The organizing continued on to other welfare offices, while others went back to figure out where homeless families would sleep for the night.